First English dictionary of ancient Greek since Victorian era

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Victorian attempts to veil the meanings of crude ancient Greek words are set to be brushed away by a new dictionary 23 years in the making. It is the first to take a fresh look at the language in almost 200 years and promises to “spare no blushes” for today’s classics students.

The late scholar John Chadwick first came up with the idea to update HG Liddell and Robert Scott’s 1889 dictionary, the Intermediate Greek-English Lexicon, in 1997. An abridged version of a lexicon published in 1843, the Liddell and Scott had never been revised, and is packed with antiquated terms and modestly Victorian translations of the more colourful ancient Greek words. Despite this, it remains the most commonly used reference work for students in English schools and universities. 

The new dictionary’s editors “spare no blushes”, Diggle said, when it comes to the words that “brought a blush to Victorian cheeks”. The verb χέζω (chezo), translated by Liddell and Scott as “ease oneself, do one’s need”, is defined in the new dictionary as “to defecate” and translated as “to ****”; βίνέω (bineo) is no longer “inire, coire, of illicit intercourse”, but “****”; λαικάζω (laikazo), in the 19th-century dictionary translated as “to wench”, is now defined as “perform fellatio” and translated as “suck cocks”.

The Cambridge Greek Lexicon also begins each entry with the rootmeaning of a word, a fundamentally different approach to the 19th-century lexicon, which started entries with a word’s earliest appearance in literature. “Take a word like πόλις, which will be familiar to many in its English form ‘polis’,” said Diggle. “Our article shows the variety of senses which the word can have: in its earliest usage ‘citadel, acropolis’; then, more generally, ‘city, town’ and also ‘territory, land’

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2021/may/27/first-english-dictionary-of-ancient-greek-since-victorian-era-spares-no-blushes-lexicon-classics

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πρωκτοπεντετηρίς y'all

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i wish i could  λαικάζω

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Ooh love this! I find the evolution of language so fascinating