English words of Greek origin
The Greek language has contributed to the English lexicon in five main ways: Of these, the neologisms are by far the most numerous. Indirect and direct borrowings. Since the living Greek and English languages were not in direct contact until modern times, borrowings were necessarily indirect, coming either through Latin (through texts or through French and other vernaculars), or from Ancient Greek texts, not the living spoken language. Vernacular borrowings. Romance languages. Some Greek words were borrowed into Latin and its descendants, the Romance languages. English often received these words from French. Some have remained  very close to the Greek original, "e.g." "lamp" (Latin ; Greek ). In others, the phonetic and orthographic form has changed considerably. For instance, "place" was borrowed both by Old English and by French from Latin , itself borrowed from , 'broad (street)'; the Italian and Spanish have the same origin, and have been borrowed into English in parallel. The word "olive" comes through the Romance from the Latin , which in turn comes from the Greek "elaíwā" (). A later Greek word, "boútȳron" (), becomes Latin and eventually English "butter". A large group of early borrowings, again transmitted first through Latin, then through various vernaculars, comes  from Christian vocabulary: In some cases, the orthography of these words was later changed to reflect the Greek—and Latin—spelling: "e.g.", "quire" was respelled as "choir" in the 17th century. Sometimes this was done incorrectly: "ache" is from a Germanic root; the spelling "ache" reflects Samuel Johnson's incorrect etymology from . Other. Exceptionally, "church" came into Old English as "cirice", "circe" via a West Germanic language. The Greek form was probably "kȳriakḗ" ["oikía"] ( 'lord's [house]'). In contrast, the Romance languages generally used the Latin words or , both borrowed from Greek. Learned borrowings. Many more words were borrowed by  scholars writing in Medieval and Renaissance Latin. Some words were borrowed in essentially their original meaning, often transmitted through Classical Latin: "topic", "type", "physics", "iambic", "eta", "necromancy", "cosmopolite". A few result from scribal errors: "encyclopedia" < 'the circle of learning' (not a compound in Greek); "acne" < (erroneous) < 'high point, acme'. Some kept their Latin form, "e.g.", "podium" < . Others were borrowed unchanged as technical terms, but with specific, novel meanings: Usage in neologisms. But by far the largest Greek contribution to English vocabulary is the huge number of scientific, medical, and technical neologisms that have been coined by  compounding Greek roots and affixes to produce novel words which never existed in the Greek language: So it is really the combining forms of Greek roots and affixes that are borrowed, not the words. Neologisms using these elements are coined in all the European languages, and spread to the others freely—including to Modern Greek, where they are considered to be reborrowings. Traditionally, these coinages were constructed using only Greek morphemes, "e.g.", "metamathematics", but increasingly, Greek, Latin, and other morphemes are combined. These hybrid words were formerly considered to be 'barbarisms', such as: Some derivations are idiosyncratic, not following Greek  compounding patterns, for example: Many combining forms have specific technical meanings in neologisms, not predictable from the Greek sense: In standard chemical nomenclature, the numerical prefixes are "only loosely based on the corresponding Greek words", "e.g." "octaconta-" is used for 80 instead of the Greek "ogdoeconta-" '80'. There are also "mixtures of Greek and Latin roots", "e.g.", "nonaconta-", for 90, is a blend of the Latin "nona-" for 9 and the Greek found in words such as ἐνενήκοντα "enenekonta" '90'. The Greek form is, however, used in the names of polygons in mathematics, though the names of polyhedra are more  idiosyncratic. Many Greek affixes such as "anti-" and "-ic" have become productive in English, combining with arbitrary English words: "antichoice", "Fascistic". Some words in English have been reanalyzed as a base plus suffix, leading to suffixes based on Greek words, but which are not suffixes in Greek ("cf." libfix). Their meaning relates to the full word they were shortened from, not the Greek meaning: Through other languages. Some Greek words were borrowed through Arabic and then Romance. Many are learned: However, others are popular: A few words took other routes: Vernacular or learned doublets. Some Greek words have given rise  to etymological doublets, being borrowed both through a later learned, direct route, and earlier through an organic, indirect route: Other doublets come from differentiation in the borrowing languages: From modern Greek. Finally, with the growth of tourism and emigration, some words reflecting modern Greek culture have been borrowed into English—many of them originally borrowings into Greek themselves: Greek as an intermediary. Many words from the Hebrew Bible were transmitted to the western languages through the Greek of the Septuagint, often without morphological regularization: Written form of Greek words in English. Many Greek words, especially those borrowed through the literary  tradition, are recognizable as such from their spelling. Latin had standard orthographies for Greek borrowings, including, but not limited to: These conventions, which originally reflected pronunciation, have carried over into English and other languages with historical orthography, like French. They make it possible to recognize words of Greek origin, and give hints as to their pronunciation and inflection. The romanization of some digraphs is rendered in various ways in English. The diphthongs and may be spelled in three different ways in English: The ligatures have largely fallen out of use worldwide; the digraphs are uncommon in American usage, but remain  common in British usage. The spelling depends mostly on the variety of English, not on the particular word. Examples include: "encyclopaedia" / "encyclopædia" / "encyclopedia"; "haemoglobin" / "hæmoglobin" / "hemoglobin"; and "oedema" / "œdema" / "edema". Some words are almost always written with the digraph or ligature: "amoeba" / "amœba", rarely "ameba"; "Oedipus" / "Œdipus", rarely "Edipus"; others are almost always written with the single letter: "sphære" and "hæresie" were obsolete by 1700; "phænomenon" by 1800; "phænotype" and "phænol" by 1930. The verbal ending is spelled "-ize" in American English, and "-ise" or "-ize" in British English. Since the 19th century, a few learned words were introduced using  a direct transliteration of Ancient Greek and including the Greek endings, rather than the traditional Latin-based spelling: "nous" (νοῦς), "koine" (κοινή), "hoi polloi" (οἱ πολλοί), "kudos" (κύδος), "moron" (μωρόν), "kubernetes" (κυβερνήτης). For this reason, the Ancient Greek digraph is rendered differently in different words—as "i", following the standard Latin form: "idol" < εἴδωλον; or as "ei", transliterating the Greek directly: "eidetic" (< εἰδητικός), "deixis", "seismic". Most plurals of words ending in "-is" are "-es" (pronounced [iːz]), using the regular Latin plural rather than the Greek "-εις": "crises", "analyses", "bases", with only a few didactic words having English plurals  in "-eis": "poleis", "necropoleis", and "acropoleis" (though "acropolises" is by far the most common English plural). Most learned borrowings and coinages follow the Latin system, but there are some irregularities: Some words whose spelling in French and Middle English did not reflect their Greco-Latin origins were refashioned with etymological spellings in the 16th and 17th centuries: "caracter" became "character" and "quire" became "choir". In some cases, a word's spelling clearly shows its Greek origin: Other exceptions include: Pronunciation. In clusters such as "ps-", "pn-", and "gn-" which are not allowed by English phonotactics, the usual English pronunciation drops  the first consonant ("e.g.", psychology) at the start of a word; compare "gnostic" [nɒstɪk] and "agnostic" [ægnɒstɪk]; there are a few exceptions: "tmesis" [t(ə)miːsɪs]. Initial "x-" is pronounced "z". "Ch" is pronounced like "k" rather than as in "church": "e.g.", character, chaos. The consecutive vowel letters 'ea' are generally pronounced separately rather than forming a single vowel sound when transcribing a Greek εα, which was not a digraph, but simply a sequence of two vowels with hiatus, as in "genealogy" or "pancreas" ("cf.", however, "ocean", ωκεανός); "zeal" (earlier "zele") comes irregularly from the η in ζήλος. Some sound sequences in  English are only found in borrowings from Greek, notably initial sequences of two fricatives, as in "sphere". Most initial /z/ sounds are found in Greek borrowings. The stress on borrowings via Latin which keep their Latin form generally follows the traditional English pronunciation of Latin, which depends on the syllable structure in "Latin", not in Greek. For example, in Greek, both ὑπόθεσις ("hypothesis") and ἐξήγησις ("exegesis") are accented on the antepenult, and indeed the penult has a long vowel in "exegesis"; but because the penult of Latin "exegēsis" is heavy by Latin rules, the accent falls on the penult in  Latin and therefore in English. Inflectional endings and plurals. Though many English words derived from Greek through the literary route drop the inflectional endings ("tripod", "zoology", "pentagon") or use Latin endings ("papyrus", "mausoleum"), some preserve the Greek endings: In cases like "scene", "zone", "fame", though the Greek words ended in -η, the silent English "e" is not derived from it. In the case of Greek endings, the plurals sometimes follow the Greek rules: "phenomenon, phenomena"; "tetrahedron, tetrahedra"; "crisis, crises"; "hypothesis, hypotheses"; "polis, poleis"; "stigma, stigmata"; "topos, topoi"; "cyclops, cyclopes"; but often do not: "colon, colons" not "*cola" (except for the  very rare technical term of rhetoric); "pentathlon, pentathlons" not "*pentathla"; "demon, demons" not "*demones"; "climaxes", not . Usage is mixed in some cases: "schema, schemas" or "schemata"; "lexicon, lexicons" or "lexica"; "helix, helixes" or "helices"; "sphinx, sphinges" or "sphinxes"; "clitoris, clitorises" or "clitorides". And there are misleading cases: "pentagon" comes from Greek "pentagonon", so its plural cannot be ; it is "pentagons"—the Greek form would be "*pentagona" ("cf." Plurals from Latin and Greek). Verbs. A few dozen English verbs are derived from the corresponding Greek verbs; examples are "baptize", "blame" and "blaspheme", "stigmatize", "ostracize", and "cauterize". In addition, the Greek verbal  suffix "-ize" is productive in Latin, the Romance languages, and English: words like "metabolize", though composed of a Greek root and a Greek suffix, are modern compounds. A few of these also existed in Ancient Greek, such as "crystallize", "characterize", and "democratize", but were probably coined independently in modern languages. This is particularly clear in cases like "allegorize" and "synergize", where the Greek verbs ἀλληγορεῖν and συνεργεῖν do not end in "-ize" at all. Some English verbs with ultimate Greek etymologies, like "pause" and "cycle", were formed as denominal verbs in English, even though there are corresponding Greek verbs, παῦειν /παυσ- and κυκλεῖν. Borrowings and cognates. Greek and English share many Indo-European cognates. In some cases, the cognates can be confused with borrowings. For example, the English "mouse" is cognate with Greek /mys/ and Latin , all from an Indo-European word "*mūs"; they are not borrowings. Similarly, "acre" is cognate to Latin and Greek , but not a borrowing; the prefix "agro-" is a borrowing from Greek, and the prefix "agri-" a borrowing from Latin. Phrases. Many are used verbatim in English texts—"et cetera" (etc.), "ad nauseam", "modus operandi" (M.O.), "ad hoc", "in flagrante delicto", "mea culpa", and so on —but this is rarer for : Calques and translations. Greek technical terminology was often calqued in Latin rather than borrowed, and then borrowed from Latin into English. Examples include: Greek phrases were also calqued in Latin, then borrowed or translated into English: The Greek word has come into English both in borrowed forms like "evangelical" and the form "gospel", an English calque (Old English 'good tidings') of , itself a calque of the Greek. Statistics. The contribution of Greek to the English vocabulary can be quantified in two ways, "type" and "token" frequencies: type frequency is the proportion of distinct words; token  frequency is the proportion of words in actual texts. Since most words of Greek origin are specialized technical and scientific coinages, the type frequency is considerably higher than the token frequency. And the type frequency in a large word list will be larger than that in a small word list. In a typical English dictionary of 80,000 words, which corresponds very roughly to the vocabulary of an educated English speaker, about 5% of the words are borrowed from Greek. Most common. Of the 500 most common words in English, 18 are of Greek origin: "place" (rank 115), "problem" (121), "school  (147), system" (180), "program" (241), "idea" (252), "story" (307), "base" (328), "center" (335), "period" (383), "history" (386), "type" (390), "music" (393), "political" (395), "policy" (400), "paper" (426), "phone" (480), "economic" (494).