English Idioms with Etymology in Greek and Classical Mythology and Legends: the Frequency of Use and Use across Genres

ABSTRACT

Some linguists claim that Greek and classical myths and legends are relevant in the English language as a result of the frequent use of idioms derived from Greek and classical myths and legends. However, these claims are unfounded as there is no empirical data to support them. This paper aims to explore the frequent use and use across genres of these idioms in the Corpus of Contemporary American English to find whether the claims are true. Consequently, 22 idioms found in dictionaries of idioms are observed in COCA. The results show that the relevancy of the Greek and classical myths and legends is not dependent on their frequent use.

INTRODUCTION

It has been commonly assumed that myths and legends from classical and Greek mythology live on through the idioms of the English language. Although this may be accurate, these claims have been futile as there is a complete lack of detailed studies to support them. In fact, when it comes to corpus research in the field of idioms derived from Greek and Classical mythology and legends, it is an undiscovered area, in which there is a lack of work.

The aim of this paper is to make a meaningful contribution to the field of idioms with etymology in Greek and Classical mythology and legends by observing their frequency of use and use across different genres in the Corpus of Contemporary American English (COCA) in order to find out whether the relevance of myths and legends from classical and Greek mythology is a result of their recurrent use in English. To achieve this, a definitive list of idioms needs to be established. However, prior to coming up with a list of idioms, a proper framework, which would set the conditions for the choice of idioms, must be set up by looking at literature on mythology, legends, and idioms.

LITERATURE REVIEW

Myth

The fascination with the unexplainable has been the focus of man since the dawn of time. In particular, people have been trying to explain their existence, their surroundings and how their surroundings came to be. The tool, which helped people find answers to these questions in the ancient times, was the myth.

Even though there have been many attempts at trying to define what a myth is, “The establishment of a single, comprehensive definition of myth has proved impossible to attain” (Morford et. al., 2011). In general dictionaries, we could find the term “myth” described as “An ancient story or set of stories, especially explaining the early history of a group of people or about natural events and facts” (Cambridge Dictionary) or even as “A usually traditional story of ostensibly historical events that serves to unfold part of the world view of a people or explain a practice, belief, or natural phenomenon” (Merriam-Webster Dictionary). However, more specifically, Trikha (2013) describes myths as “an eminent source of quenching our human thirst for ontological questions” (p. 78).

In regard to the functions that myths perform, Graves (as cited in Trikha, 2013, p. 79) claims that “Myth has two main functions. The first is to answer the sort of awkward questions that children ask, such as: Who made the world? How will it end? Who was the first man? Where do sounds go after death? The second function of myth is to justify an existing social system and account for traditional rites and customs.”

As far as the interest in myths in the modern era, Pinsent (1969) states that “There is little doubt that all those stories are still told because they satisfy some psychological need in the minds of their hearers” (p. 12). Nonetheless, another school of thought concerning the perception of myths must be acknowledged. The French philosopher and father of post-modernism, Jean Francois Lyotard “Declared in 1979 that nobody believes in myths anymore” because “after the World Wars, people lost their faith in overarching myths, or meta-narratives” (Trikha, 2013, p. 83). Another reason for the lack of interest and relevance of myths may be the fast-paced development of science which “can provide answers to mankind’s curious questions concerning the origin of the worlds” (Trikha, 2013, p.78).

Myth vs. Legend

A very common issue when it comes to the the words “myth” and “legend” is their incorrect interchangeable use without taking into consideration their actual meanings. According to Provensen (1959), “A myth is an invented story while a legend is not wholly an invented story — it is a kind of history. Of course there may be plenty of invention and myth wrapped around a legend but always at its heart there is a kernel of historical truth.” A well-known example of a myth would be that of Prometheus and the theft of fire. This story could be classified as a myth because of its implausible content. The legend of the “Gordian Knot,” on the other hand, is a notable instance of a legend as it features Alexander the Great, who was a real historical figure. Although the differentiation between the two appears straightforward, in actuality it is not. This is evident in the labeling of certain famous myths and legends, such as the myth — or legend — of Midas. In Hamilton’s classic Mythology, she dedicates a whole chapter to Midas; thus implying that his story is an implausible one without any relation to real historical events. However, “Midas (flourished 700 BC?), king of Phyrgia (an ancient district in west-central Anatolia), first mentioned in extant Greek literature by Herodotus as having dedicated a throne at Delphi, before Gyges — i.e., before or little after 700 BC” (Encyclopedia Britannica). Since Midas is said to have been a real historical figure, there are many who hold the view that the story of Midas is that of a legend and not a myth. Therefore, this illustrates the point that the distinction between a myth and a legend is not always clear-cut.

Classical Mythology

Another grey area in the area of mythology is that of classical mythology. Besides Greek mythology, at least in the Western world, there is another dominant force in mythology and that is Roman mythology. Since these two share many similarities and are closely related to each other, they are put together under one umbrella and that is classical mythology. To be exact, “Classical mythology is a term often used to designate the myths belonging to the Greek and Roman traditions” (Maicar). However, Morford et al. (2011) define classical myths in a more general way. “A classical myth is a story that, through its classical form, has attained a kind of immortality because its inherent archetypal beauty, profundity, and power have inspired rewarding renewal and transformation by successive generations.” What these definitions fail to consider, however, is the fact that many authors tend to claim that a myth belongs exclusively to either Greek or Roman mythology and not classical mythology. For instance, the myth of Scylla and Charybdis is claimed to belong almost exclusively to the tradition of Greek mythology and not classical mythology. However, in the Oxford Dictionary of Idioms it is claimed to be part of classical mythology.

Popularity of Greek Mythology

As previously pointed out, the reason for the relevance of myths in today’s society may be their ability to “satisfy some psychological need in the minds of their hearers.” Besides that, according to Trikha (2013, p. 79), “Some Greek themes and myths which are recurrent in English literature and resurface in literary works from time to time reinforce the influence Greek mythology has had.” A classic example is Shakespeare whose works include plenty of allusions to Greek mythology. Take the character Cupid, for instance, from A Midsummer’s Night Dream. The references to Greek mythology extend to Keats’ Ode to Grecian Urn or even to the works of modern authors such as George Bernard Shaw’s Pygmalion or James Joyce’s Ulysses.

Other than the presence of Greek myths in English through their constant reinforcement in canonized works, Trikha (2013, p. 82) claims that “what makes Greek myths more popular than myths of any other nation is the fact that they still persist in the Greek roots of many English words and in our culture and literature.” Consequently, she adds that “myths lie beyond our conscious awareness.” Take for example the idiom, “Pandora’s box,” which always reminds the speaker of the myth of Pandora, the first woman on earth. Even though the reference to the myth is explicit, it does not necessarily mean that the speaker would be familiar with it. However, what Trikha does not take into account are idioms like “a golden age,” which derive from Greek mythology, yet the reference to Greek mythology is not as clear as a result of the frequent use of the phrase over a large period of time. Despite the fact that its etymology lies in Greek mythology, the idiom “a golden age” could be detached from its etymology in the speaker’s mind.

Idioms and Metaphors

According to Jackson and Amvela (2000), “An idiom may be defined as a phrase, the meaning of which cannot be predicted from the individual meanings of the morphemes it comprises.” For a phrase to be classified as an idiom, Jackson and Amvela give the following conditions: (a) it must be a multi-word item; (b) its meaning cannot be distinguished from its constituents; © it is frequently used; (d) it has a fixed word order. A classic example in the field of lexicology is the idiom “kick the bucket,” which fulfills all these criteria. First, it consists of three words. Second, without prior knowledge, one cannot figure out the intended figurative meaning of the phrase. Third, it is a frequently used phrase. Finally, its word order cannot be changed as the meaning would change with it.

Jackson and Amvela (2000) also state that “most idioms are easily recognized as ‘frozen metaphors’.” This implies that idioms, such as “kick the bucket,” initially functioned as active metaphors, whose meaning speakers of English could easily distinguish. However, over a large period of time, when a metaphor is frequently used, it becomes a “fixed lexical unit” and consequently, they “tend to lose their vividness, and speakers often lose sight of their metaphorical origins.” Also, in the period when a metaphor is supposed to become an idiom, some of the multi-word items never make the necessary transition from one category to another as a result of their infrequent use.

In order to achieve native-like fluency of English, learners are taught the importance of idioms from an early age and what register they are used in. According to Liu (2003), “idioms are register sensitive” and they are typically taught with “a register in mind” (p. 672). To be more exact, idioms are typically taught as being part of informal language and spoken language. Although this may be true and based on real data from corpora, idioms are not restricted to informal and spoken registers. They could also be found in formal registers and even academic language.

METHODS

Although the initial intention of the study was to observe the idioms deriving from Greek mythology, due to the factors, which will be discussed below, it was extended to idioms with etymology in Greek mythology and legends and classical mythology.

The first step to find out the frequency and frequency in use across genres of the idioms was to define what the idioms are and establish a definitive list of them. Since the focus of the study are idioms from Greek mythology and legends and classical mythology, the obvious approach would be to look up all the words and phrases in a general dictionary, such as the online version of the Oxford English Dictionary, by a field, i.e. mythology and legends, then examine each one of them carefully while sorting out them into idioms and non-idioms following the previously stated criteria. Another approach would be to search for idioms in an etymological dictionary, i.e. all the words deriving from Greek mythology and legends as well as classical mythology. However, not only did these methods prove to be time consuming, but they did not lead to fruitful results. The first reason for this outcome is that the Oxford English Dictionary is a general dictionary and does not specialize in idiomacity. The second one is the fact that the majority of the items listed in the Oxford English Dictionary are single-word items, which do not fulfill the aforementioned criterion by Jackson and Amvela. Namely, idioms need to be multi-word items. However, single-word items, which frequently collocate or co-occur frequently with other single-word items to form multi-word units, must also be acknowledged. Take for example the word “Cassandra,” meaning “one that predicts misfortune or disaster,” (Merriam-Webster) which could be found as a part of a multi-word unit in “to be a Cassandra.” In this instance, one could argue that the whole phrase should be considered an idiom, as it fulfills the criteria mentioned above. Others, however, may argue that these items do not collocate frequently enough and that it is merely a case of a metaphor. To avoid these predicaments, the best solution was to turn to dictionaries that specialize in idiomaticity, i.e. dictionaries of idioms.

The four, most prominent dictionaries of idioms are: Oxford Dictionary of Idioms, Dictionary of Idioms and their Origins by Richard and Linda Flavell, NTC’s American Idioms Dictionary by Richard A. Spears and Collins Cobuild Dictionary of Idioms. Nonetheless, the second two dictionaries were excluded from the research as they do not include the etymology of the idioms, which made it impossible to determine which idioms are derived from Greek and classical mythology and legends.

At the beginning, the idioms in focus were those with etymology in Greek mythology. However, the authors and editors Oxford Dictionary of Idioms and Dictionary of Idioms and their Origins tend to label the origin of the idioms inconsistently with the popular classification in literature on mythology. The idiom “Scylla and Charybdis,” for instance, is said to derive from classical mythology in Oxford Dictionary of Idioms, even though it is widely recognized as a myth belonging to Greek mythology. Another example would be the idiom “Midas touch” whose etymology is said to be in the classical legend of King Midas, despite the fact that it is almost exclusively recognized as a Greek myth across literature. As a result of these differences in labeling, this study focused on the idioms listed in Oxford Dictionary of Idioms and Dictionary of Idioms and their Origins with etymology in Greek and classical mythology and legends.

There are 22 idioms that fit the abovementioned criteria.

Table 1: Idioms found in Oxford Dictionary of Idioms and Dictionary of Idioms and their Origins

1. An Achilles Heel

2. Apple of Discord

3. Battle of Giants

4. Sow Dragon’s Teeth

5. A Golden Age

6. A Labor of Hercules

7. In the Lap of the Gods

8. The Shirt of Nessus

9. A Pandora’s Box

10. Pile Pelion on Ossa

11. A Procustean Bed

12. A Sop to Cerberus

13. A Trojan Horse

14. Midas Touch

15. Scylla and Charybdis

16. Cut the Gordian Knot

17. (Not) to Have a Clue

18. Halcyon Days

19. Judgment of Paris

20. Rise from the Ashes

21. Siren Song

22. Elysian Fields

After collecting the idioms, their frequency of use and use across different genres was observed in the Corpus of Contemporary American English (COCA). The reason for choosing COCA is simple — it boasts one of the largest collections of words. To be specific, COCA has more than one billion words, which have been periodically added to the corpus from 1990 to 2019. Thus, COCA represents an image of the language that is not frozen and restricted to a particular period. Another motive for choosing COCA as the corpus to perform the research in is the wide variety of genres it offers. Namely, it contains the following genres: spoken, fiction, magazines, newspapers, academic, web (genl), web (blog), TV/movies. This diversity of genres allowed for the intended research to be conducted.

RESULTS

Table 2 presents the results of the first part of the analysis. Specifically, it shows the number of occurrences of the established idioms in COCA and simultaneously their general frequency of use

Table 2: Occurrences of Idioms in COCA

In Table 3, the occurrences of the idioms are further divided into the genres COCA offers, i.e. fiction, spoken, academic, TV/movie, news, magazine, web, and blog. The table also presents the results of the second part of the analysis or the frequency of use of the idioms across different genres.

Table 3: Frequency of Idioms Across Genres

The data from the idiom with the highest number of occurrences “golden age” across different genres is presented in Table 4.

Table 4: Occurrences of the Idiom “Golden Age

DISCUSSION

The total amount of occurrences of idioms deriving from Greek and classical mythology and legends is 7164. This number of occurrences is very low, which makes it difficult to make meaningful conclusions and generalize on the use of these idioms in English. Another factor that does not allow for generalizations to be made is the uneven spread of the occurrences of these idioms because they appear in extremes. For example, the idiom “golden age” appears 2489 times or 34.74% and the idiom “pile Helion on Ossa” does not appear at all in COCA. What is more, the idioms “golden age” and “have a clue” present 4664 of the occurrences or 65.1%, which further illustrates the large divide between the most frequently used idioms and the least frequently used ones. Although these idioms do not appear enough to make assumptions about their use, they provide empirical data and simultaneously proof, which lacked in previous studies in the field, against the claim that idioms with etymology in Greek and classical legends and myths are relevant in English as a result of their frequent use. Thus, it could be said that there is no direct correlation between the popularity of Greek and classical myths and legends in English and the frequent use of idioms derived from them.

Not only does the low frequency of use of these idioms in English prove that their relevance is not dependent on their use, it also exposes the fault in the claim made by Trikha (2013), who has stated that Greek myths are present in the vocabulary of the English language and as a result are part of the consciousness of the speakers. The fact that Greek myths can be found in the vocabulary of English cannot be denied. However, in order for a word to be part of the consciousness of the speaker, they must be familiar with it. If the speaker is not familiar with the word, one could assume that they are not aware of its etymology and simultaneously Greek mythology. This is particularly evident in the low frequency of occurrence of these idioms, which raises the question whether these idioms are part of the consciousness of the average speaker of English. Thus, it is safe to assume that Trikha’s claim is not empirically proven but comes from a reference point of intuition.

Although the results of the study may prove that Trikha’s proposal may not be correct, one could argue that the size of the corpus is not representative of real language, or as Widdowson (2000) has put it, a corpus is “[…] only a partial account of real language.” This assertion then implies that Trikha’s statement could be true as COCA cannot account for all the utterances speakers make. Kennedy (1998), on the other hand, presents an opposite point-of-view that “generalizations are an essential part of science” (p. 62). Therefore, considering that COCA offers more than one billion words and the fact that it is impossible to record the utterances of each speaker, it is safe to make generalizations on these idioms. In other words,

In general terms, as discussed in the literature review, idioms are used in informal language as well as in spoken language. However, the data collected for these idioms shows the opposite. In other words, the use of idioms is not concentrated in one genre or the spoken register as it would be expected. Therefore, if we disregard the fact that two of the idioms consist 65.1% of the occurrences, then we could conclude that the use of idioms is spread almost evenly across the genres.

Since the majority of the idioms have a low number of occurrences, it is therefore easier to focus on the idiom with the most occurrences and observe its use across the different genres offered in COCA. The idiom with the most occurrences (2489 or 34.74%) is “golden age.” Although the highest number of occurrences could be found in the magazines genre (537 or 22%), a genre that deserves attention is the academic one, since it is the furthest from informal and spoken language. The number of occurrences in the academic genre of “golden age” is 464 or 19%. Although the occurrences of this idiom in academic English may come as a surprise initially, after observing the use of the idiom in context, it could be concluded that it is mainly used in the sub-genre of history. For example, such as “the golden age of the Ottoman Empire” or “the golden age of the Spanish Empire.”

CONCLUSIONS

The study presented in this paper examined the frequency of use and use across different genres of idioms with etymology in Greek and classical mythology and legends in order to see whether the popularity of Greek and classical myths and legends in English is directly connected to the recurrent use of the idioms. The study revealed that there is no correlation between the use of the idioms and the popularity of the myths and legends in English. Furthermore, the low occurrences of the idioms in English also showed that Greek myths are not part of the speakers’ consciousness as the speakers are not familiar with idioms derived from Greek myths and simultaneously their etymology. The study also showed that the idioms were spread evenly across all the genres and were not concentrated in the spoken genre, as that is the genre idioms could be frequently found in.

Even though the corpus chosen for the study or COCA is one of the largest corpora available at the moment, the number of occurrences of these idioms was very low. A possible explanation for these results may be the fact that the corpus does not represent a real picture of the English language. If this is indeed the case, the study could be expanded further in the future to other large corpora, such as the English Web 2013 or English Web 2015 corpora. An alternative option would also be to expand the research to corpora that specialize in literature, such as the Project Gutenberg corpus. The results from all these corpora could then be compared and contrasted in order to see whether the low frequency of use of idioms with etymology in Greek and classical mythology and legends is a trend that is present in all the corpora or it is restricted to the Contemporary Corpus of American English.

LITERATURE CITED

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