Everyday LifeGreek → English
Zeno
/ˈziːnoʊ/noun
A Greek male name borne by several ancient philosophers.
The Greek roots
Ζεύς
Zeús
Zeus, the sky god
Literally: “of Zeus”
Follow a root:Ζεύς1 word
The story of the word
Ζήνων comes from Ζην-, an oblique stem of Ζεύς, so the name means something like Zeus's man. Two holders shaped philosophy: Zeno of Elea, who argued that Achilles can never overtake the tortoise, and Zeno of Citium, who taught in the Stoa Poikile, the painted colonnade on the edge of the agora, and left his school named after a building rather than a man. Zenith looks like a relative and is not; it comes through Arabic samt, direction.
- How it travelled
- Ancient Greek → Latin → English
Same family
ZenobiaZenaida
In a sentence
Zeno's paradoxes still get set to first-year students.
Zeno of Citium arrived in Athens after a shipwreck, or so the story runs.