Word of the Day
Ἄδωνις
Ádōnis
Ancient Greek from Phoenician
Phoenician/ʔa.doːn/Ancient Greek/á.doː.nis/
“The most beautiful man in Greek mythology was not Greek at all — his name is the Semitic word for 'lord,' and his blood gave a flower its color.”
Ἄδωνις (Ádōnis) entered Greek from the Phoenician אדון (ʾadōn), meaning 'lord' or 'master' — the same Semitic root that appears in Hebrew Adonai, one of the names of God. The Greeks encountered Adonis worship in the Levant, likely through trading contacts with Byblos (modern Jbeil, Lebanon) during the 7th century BCE. They absorbed the deity wholesale, rewriting his rites into their own mythology. He is one of the clearest examples of a Phoenician religious loan into the Greek world.
5 stops · from Byblos to Global