Ancient Greek words from Aramaic
5 Ancient Greek words with Aramaic in their history, whether borrowed directly or passed on through other languages.
ἀββᾶς
It is borrowed from Aramaic אַבָּא (ʾabbā, “father”), the emphatic form of the Aramaic word for “father”. The first Greek form was the indeclinable ἀββᾶ (abbâ), which reproduces the Aramaic emphatic…
ἀλόη
Beekes, Chantraine and Frisk consider it, like ἀγάλοχον (agálokhon, “agarwood”), a loanword from an Oriental language whose source is unknown. The Cambridge Greek Lexicon calls it a Semitic…
πάσχα
borrowed from Aramaic פַּסְחָא (pasḥā), the emphatic form of the Aramaic word, which corresponds to Biblical Hebrew פֶּסַח (pésaḥ), the Passover. It is an indeclinable neuter. In Christian Greek the…
Σατανᾶς
It is borrowed from Aramaic סָטָנָא (sāṭānā), the Aramaic form with the article, from which the inflected Greek form comes; the word corresponds to Biblical Hebrew שָׂטָן (śāṭān, “adversary”), which…
σήσαμον
It is a Semitic loanword. Wiktionary takes it as borrowed from Aramaic שושמא (šūššmā), a shortening of šumššemā, from Akkadian šamaššammū (“oil plant”), a compound of šaman “oil” and šammum “plant”…