How to sound clever

Believe it or not, according to one estimate, more than 150,000 words of English are derived from Greek words!

Recently we had a look at the book "How to sound clever: Master the 600 English words you pretend to understand...when you don't" by Hubert van den Bergh and we spotted that 117 out of the 600 words on this book are Greek.

Here is the list with all of these words:

A

aphorism, aegis, anachronistic, anaemic, anodyne, anomic, anthropogenic, anthropomorphise, apocryphal, apologist, apostatise, Arcadian, archipelago, Augean, autocrat, autodidact, automaton

B

bacchanalian, bathetic, Byzantine

C

callisthenics, Cassandra, caustic, chimera, chrysalis, climacteric

D

deleterious, Delphic, demotic, dialectic, diaspora, dichotomy, didactic, Dionysian, diuretic, Doric, dyad, dyspeptic, dystopia

E

elegiac, elliptical, emetic, endemic, ephemeron, epithet, eponymous, ethereal, euphonic

G

gnomic

H

hagiography, halcyon, hamartia, harpy, hegemony, heterogeneous, hubris, Hydra, hyperbole

I

ideologue, idiosyncratic

L

laconic, lard with (larinos), litotes, logorrheic

M

metonym, miasma, microcosm, monoglot, monolithic, myopic

N

nemesis, neologism

O

oxymoron

P

palimpest, panglossian, panoply, pantheon, paradigm, parenthetical, parochial, paroxysm, pathetic fallacy, pathological, peripatetic, phalanx, phlegmatic, physiognomy, plutocrat, polemic, polyglot, polymath, polyphonic, priapic, Procrustean, proselytise, protean

R

rhapsodise about

S

sardonic, scatological, sclerotic, seismic, semiotics, solecism, sophistry, splenetic, stentorian, symposium, synaesthesia, synapse, synecdoche

T

tautology, teleological, theocrat, topography, trope

U

utopia