Greek definition | Dictionary.com

Greek

[greek]

–adjective

1.	of or pertaining to Greece, the Greeks, or their language.

2.	pertaining to the Greek Orthodox Church.

noting or pertaining to the alphabetical script derived from a Semitic form of writing and employing some letters that originally represented consonants for vowel sounds, which was used from about the beginning of the first millennium b.c. for the writing of Greek, and from which the Latin, Cyrillic, and other alphabets were derived.

–noun

4.	a native or inhabitant of Greece.

5.	the language of the ancient Greeks and any of the languages that have developed from it, as Hellenistic Greek, Biblical Greek, the Koine, and Modern Greek. Abbreviation: Gk, Gk.

6.	Informal. anything unintelligible, as speech, writing, etc.: This contract is Greek to me.

7.	a member of the Greek Church.

8.	Hellenic (def. 3).

9.	a person who belongs to a Greek-letter fraternity or sorority.

10.	Archaic. a cheater, esp. one who cheats at cards: usually considered offensive.

Origin:
bef. 900; ME; OE Grēcas (pl.) < L Graecī the Greeks (nom. pl. of Graecus) < Gk Graikoí, pl. of Graikós Greek

Related forms:

Greekdom, noun

Greekish, adjective

Hel⋅len⋅ic

[he-len-ik, -lee-nik]

–adjective

1.	of, pertaining to, or characteristic of the ancient Greeks or their language, culture, thought, etc., esp. before the time of Alexander the Great. Compare Hellenistic (def. 3).

Greek.

–noun

3.	Also called Greek. a branch of the Indo-European family of languages, comprising a variety of ancient, medieval, and modern dialects and languages, all of them called Greek.

4.	Katharevusa.

Origin:
1635–45; < Gk Hellēnikós of, pertaining to the Greeks. See Hellene, -ic

Related forms:

Hel⋅len⋅i⋅cal⋅ly, adverb

Dictionary.com Unabridged
Based on the Random House Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2009.
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Link To Greek

Greek (grēk)

1. The Indo-European language of the Greeks.
2. Greek language and literature from the middle of the eighth century B.C. to the end of the third century A.D., especially the Attic Greek of the fifth and fourth centuries B.C.
3. A native or inhabitant of Greece.
4. A person of Greek ancestry.
1. A native or inhabitant of Greece.
2. A person of Greek ancestry.
Informal A member of a fraternity or sorority that has its name composed of Greek letters.
Informal Something that is unintelligible: Quantum mechanics is Greek to me.

adj. Of or relating to Greece or its people, language, or culture.

[Middle English Grek, from Old English Grēcas, the Greeks, from Latin Graecus, Greek, from Greek Graikos, tribal name.]

The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
Copyright © 2009 by Houghton Mifflin Company.
Published by Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved.
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Greek

Greek\, a. [AS. grec, L. Graecus, Gr. ?: cf. F. grec. Cf. Grecian.] Of or pertaining to Greece or the Greeks; Grecian.

Greek calends. See under Calends.

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. --Ure.

Greek rose, the flower campion.

Greek

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. --Sat. Rev.

3. Something unintelligible; as, it was all Greek to me. [Colloq.]

Greek

O.E. Crecas (pl.), early Gmc. borrowing from L. Græci "the Hellenes," from Gk. Grakoi. Aristotle, who was the first to use Graikhos as equivalent to Hellenes ("Meteorologica" I.xiv) wrote that it was the name originally used by Illyrians for the Dorians in Epirus, from Graii, native name of the people of Epirus. But a modern theory (put forth by Ger. classical historian Georg Busolt, 1850-1920), derives it from Graikhos "inhabitant of Graia" (lit. "gray"), a town on the coast of Boeotia, which was the name given by the Romans to all Greeks, originally to the Gk. colonists from Graia who helped found Cumae (9c. B.C.E.), the important city in southern Italy where the Latins first encountered Greeks. It was reborrowed in this general sense by the Greeks. Meaning "unintelligible speech, gibberish" is from 1600. Meaning "Greek letter fraternity member" is student slang, 1900.

"It was subtle of God to learn Greek when he wished to become an author -- and not to learn it better." [Nietzsche, "Beyond Good and Evil," 1886]

Greek gift is from "Æneid," II.49: "timeo Danaos et dona ferentes." The Gmc. languages originally borrowed the word with an initial -k- sound (cf. O.H.G. Chrech, Goth. Kreks), which was probably their initial sound closest to the Latin -g- at the time; the word was later refashioned.

greek
1. To display text as abstract dots and lines in order to give a preview of layout without actually being legible. This is faster than drawing the characters correctly which may require scaling or other transformations. Greeking is particularly useful when displaying a reduced image of a document where the text would be too small to be legible on the display anyway.
A related technique is lorem ipsum.
(2006-09-18)

Greek

Found only in the New Testament, where a distinction is observed between "Greek" and "Grecian" (q.v.). The former is (1) a Greek by race (Acts 16:1-3; 18:17; Rom. 1:14), or (2) a Gentile as opposed to a Jew (Rom. 2:9, 10). The latter, meaning properly "one who speaks Greek," is a foreign Jew opposed to a home Jew who dwelt in Palestine. The word "Grecians" in Acts 11:20 should be "Greeks," denoting the heathen Greeks of that city, as rendered in the Revised Version according to the reading of the best manuscripts ("Hellenes").

Easton's 1897 Bible Dictionary
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