used in the main for scholarly and technical purposes.The flowinto English was at first limited and largely religious. The significant influxwas in the late Middle ages and the renaissance.Thespelling of Greek words in English was shaped by the orthographics of Latin andFrench: Greek kaligraphia bacame Latin calligraphia, French calligraphie,and English calligraphy.Occasionally,a more Greek look survives; as with, kaleidoscope, not calidoscope,and kinetic, not cinetic.English is much richer as a result of Classical Greek contributionsTheword-creating capacity of Greek, while prodigious, is not unique; nor has itusually had a direct channel into the Western European languages; as a result,even the most rigorous scientific terminologies are hybrid.Oneexample includes the names of the geological eras, created in English as anad-hoc system unlikely to have been a classical Greek scholar's choice.TheGreeks were the first Europeans to use an alphabet, to theorize about language,and to frame language categories.Most of theliterary genres of the western world were invented or formalized by the Greeksand many of the names they used have passed with only minor adaptation to manysuccessor languages.Etymology of words or their "true meanings"People's interest in the history of words andtheir meanings dates at least from the time of the Stoics of Ancient Greece.For them, to trace the history of a word backto its origin was the best guide to its "true meaning" or etymon.This position still is prominent in argumentsabout words today, but the term etymology, derived from the Stoics'search for "the true and original meaning", is now understood simplyas the search for the historical explanations of how a word came to have itspresent form and meaning.The more successful and scholarly the searchis, the more one becomes aware not only that the ultimate "origin" ofa word can rarely be found but also that a determination to use a word in itsoldest known sense would result in total confusion for today's user.The argument that a word means what it didoriginally may be justly labeled, for all its attraction, an "etymologicalfallacy".Tracing how a word came by its presentmeaning/meanings is NOT a futile project!Once a person abandons the search for"ultimate truth" and concentrates on how meanings haveevolved, the explanations become fascinating, if not stranger than theimagination one could have predicted.The first impression someone may have is thatwords change their meanings in unpredictable ways; but this will be correctedwhen the person considers the various staging posts along the route the wordshave traveled. It is here that everyone begins to see a pattern of processeswhereby one meaning gives rise to another one.English obviously comes from many sourcesUltimately, explaining the changes of wordmeanings require full knowledge not only of relevant languages but of relevantcivilizations and their history.While this is probably an unattainable ideal,it is still considered a rewarding quest as we seek to learn more about theorigins of words.No other language gains more than English fromresearches into the past because it has borrowed so much of its vocabulary fromso many diverse sources.The words of English constitute an incredibleheritage: they represent nothing less than a crystallization and a distillationof the entire collective experience of countless speakers; transmitted in anunbroken chain from person to person, day by