GREEK • DICTIONARY ONE.COM • Definition of Greek

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/grik/ Listen

adjective

Greek adj. Of or pertaining to Greece or the Greeks; Grecian.

Greek calends. See under Greek calends in the vocabulary.

Greek Church (Eccl. Hist.), the Eastern Church; that part of Christendom which separated from the Roman or Western Church in the ninth century. It comprises the great bulk of the Christian population of Russia (of which this is the established church), Greece, Moldavia, and Wallachia. The Greek Church is governed by patriarchs and is called also the Byzantine Church.

Greek cross. See Illust. (10) Of Cross.

Greek Empire. See Byzantine Empire.

Greek fire, a combustible composition which burns under water, the constituents of which are supposed to be asphalt, with niter and sulphur.

Greek rose, the flower campion.

noun

Greek n.

1.

A native, or one of the people, of Greece; a Grecian; also, the language of Greece.

2.

A swindler; a knave; a cheat. (Slang) "Without a confederate the... game of baccarat does not... offer many chances for the Greek."

3.

Something unintelligible; as, it was all Greek to me. (Colloq.)

See images of 'Greek'

Etymology of 'Greek'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

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"Greek" Quotes from Famous Books

... common error of his age, an error far from being sufficiently exploded even at the present day. It consists (as I explained at large, and proved in detail in my public lectures,) in mistaking for the essentials of the Greek stage certain rules, which the wise poets imposed upon themselves, in order to render all the remaining parts of the drama consistent with those, that had been forced upon them by circumstances independent ...

— Biographia Literaria • Samuel Taylor Coleridge

... the knowledge of Greek and its increasing use as a medium of instruction in the schools on the one hand, and the appearance of Vergil and the rise of the Aeneas saga on the other, the demand for a translation of the ...

— Post-Augustan Poetry - From Seneca to Juvenal • H.E. Butler

... arms to the besieged garrison at Canea. As she moved from her anchorage in the harbor of Candia, she was hailed by a Greek warship, and ordered ...

— The Great Round World and What Is Going On In It, Vol. 1, No. 18, March 11, 1897 - A Weekly Magazine for Boys and Girls • Various

... I tell you, Lundi, we've got a peach. And she hasn't done her best by a long chalk. She's only beginning. You buck up and get your eyes well, my boy, and come and see for yourself." He began to hold forth in technical terms that were Greek to Tryon concerning stopes, cross-cuts, foot-walls, stamps, and drills. Every moment his voice grew gayer and more ecstatic. He seemed drunk with success and unable to contain his bubbling, rapturous ...

— Blue Aloes - Stories of South Africa • Cynthia Stockley

... encouraging things I find in the treatise, "De Senectute," are the stories of men who have found new occupations when growing old, or kept up their common pursuits in the extreme period of life. Cato learned Greek when he was old, and speaks of wishing to learn the fiddle, or some such instrument, (fidibus,) after the example of Socrates. Solon learned something new, every day, in his old age, as he gloried ...

— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 7, May, 1858 • Various

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