Library / English Dictionary

GREECE

Pronunciation (US):

(GB):

 I. (noun) 

Sense 1

Meaning:

A republic in southeastern Europe on the southern part of the Balkan peninsula; known for grapes and olives and olive oil

Synonyms:

Ellas; Greece; Hellenic Republic

Classified under:

Nouns denoting spatial position

Instance hypernyms:

Balkan country; Balkan nation; Balkan state (any one of the countries on the Balkan Peninsula)

Meronyms (parts of "Greece"):

Stagira; Stagirus (an ancient town of Greece where Aristotle was born)

Salonica; Salonika; Thessalonica; Thessaloniki (a port city in northeastern Greece on an inlet of the Aegean Sea; second largest city of Greece)

Boeotia (a district of ancient Greece to the northwest of Athens)

Actium (an ancient town on a promontory in western Greece)

Athens; Athinai; capital of Greece; Greek capital (the capital and largest city of Greece; named after Athena (its patron goddess))

Achaea (a region of ancient Greece on the north coast of the Peloponnese)

Aegina; Aigina (an island in the Aegean Sea in the Saronic Gulf)

Chios; Khios (an island in the Aegean Sea off the west coast of Turkey; belongs to Greece)

Cyclades; Kikladhes (a group of over 200 islands in the southern Aegean)

Dhodhekanisos; Dodecanese (a group of islands in the southeast Aegean Sea)

Doris (a small region of ancient Greece where the Doric dialect was spoken)

Lesbos; Lesvos; Mytilene (an island of eastern Greece in the eastern Aegean Sea; in antiquity it was famous for lyric poetry)

Rhodes; Rodhos (a Greek island in the southeast Aegean Sea 10 miles off the Turkish coast; the largest of the Dodecanese; it was colonized before 1000 BC by Dorians from Argos; site of the Colossus of Rhodes)

Crete; Kriti (the largest Greek island in the Mediterranean; site of the Minoan civilization that reached its peak in 1600 BC)

Ithaca; Ithaki (a Greek island to the west of Greece; in Homeric legend Odysseus was its king)

Athos; Mount Athos (an autonomous area in northeastern Greece that is the site of several Greek Orthodox monasteries founded in the tenth century)

Nemea (a valley in southeastern Greece where the Nemean Games were held)

Laconia (an ancient region of southern Greece in the southeastern Peloponnesus; dominated by Sparta)

Epirus (an ancient area on the Ionian Sea that flourished as a kingdom in the 3rd century BC; located in northwestern Greece and southern Albania)

Mycenae (an ancient city is southern Greece; center of the Mycenaean civilization during the late Bronze Age)

Delphi (an ancient Greek city on the slopes of Mount Parnassus; site of the oracle of Delphi)

Argos (an ancient city in southeastern Greece; dominated the Peloponnese in the 7th century BC)

Corinth; Korinthos (the modern Greek port near the site of the ancient city that was second only to Athens)

Attica (the territory of Athens in ancient Greece where the Ionic dialect was spoken)

Gulf of Aegina; Saronic Gulf (a gulf of the Aegean on the southeastern coast of Greece)

Liakoura; Mount Parnassus; Parnassus ((Greek mythology) a mountain in central Greece where (according to Greek mythology) the Muses lived; known as the mythological home of music and poetry)

Mount Olympus; Mt. Olympus; Olimbos; Olympus (a mountain peak in northeast Greece near the Aegean coast; believed by ancient Greeks to be the dwelling place of the gods (9,570 feet high))

Lemnos; Limnos (a Greek island in the northern Aegean Sea; famous for a reddish-brown clay that has medicinal properties)

Peloponnese; Peloponnesian Peninsula; Peloponnesus (the southern peninsula of Greece; dominated by Sparta until the 4th century BC)

Arcadia (a department of Greece in the central Peloponnese)

Thessalia; Thessaly (a fertile plain on the Aegean Sea in east central Greece; Thessaly was a former region of ancient Greece)

Meronyms (members of "Greece"):

Greek; Hellene (a native or inhabitant of Greece)

Grecian (a native or resident of Greece)

Domain member region:

Midas ((Greek legend) the greedy king of Phrygia who Dionysus gave the power to turn everything he touched into gold)

Sisyphus ((Greek legend) a king in ancient Greece who offended Zeus and whose punishment was to roll a huge boulder to the top of a steep hill; each time the boulder neared the top it rolled back down and Sisyphus was forced to start again)

cacodaemon; cacodemon (an evil spirit)

eudaemon; eudemon; good spirit (a benevolent spirit)

Bacchus ((classical mythology) god of wine; equivalent of Dionysus)

choragus ((ancient Greece) leader of a group or festival; leader of a chorus)

sibyl ((ancient Rome) a woman who was regarded as an oracle or prophet)

optative; optative mood (a mood (as in Greek or Sanskrit) that expresses a wish or hope; expressed in English by modal verbs)

Actium (the naval battle in which Antony and Cleopatra were defeated by Octavian's fleet under Agrippa in 31 BC)

Chaeronea (a battle in which Philip II of Macedon defeated the Athenians and Thebans (338 BC) and also Sulla defeated Mithridates (86 BC))

Battle of Lepanto; Lepanto (Turkish sea power was destroyed in 1571 by a league of Christian nations organized by the Pope)

battle of Leuctra; Leuctra (Thebes defeated Sparta in 371 BC; the battle ended Sparta's military supremacy in Greece)

Mantinea; Mantineia (the site of three famous battles among Greek city-states: in 418 BC and 362 BC and 207 BC)

battle of Marathon; Marathon (a battle in 490 BC in which the Athenians and their allies defeated the Persians)

battle of Navarino; Navarino (a decisive naval battle in the War of Greek Independence (1827); the Turkish and Egyptian fleet was defeated by an allied fleet of British and French and Russian warships)

battle of Pharsalus; Pharsalus (Caesar defeated Pompey in 48 BC)

battle of Thermopylae; Thermopylae (a famous battle in 480 BC; a Greek army under Leonidas was annihilated by the Persians who were trying to conquer Greece)

Balkan Wars (two wars (1912-1913) that were fought over the last of the European territories of the Ottoman Empire and that left the area around Constantinople (now Istanbul) as the only Ottoman territory in Europe)

bay wreath; laurel; laurel wreath ((antiquity) a wreath of laurel foliage worn on the head as an emblem of victory)

pantheon ((antiquity) a temple to all the gods)

Trojan Horse; Wooden Horse (a large hollow wooden figure of a horse (filled with Greek soldiers) left by the Greeks outside Troy during the Trojan War)

hybrid; loan-blend; loanblend (a word that is composed of parts from different languages (e.g., 'monolingual' has a Greek prefix and a Latin root))

dithyramb ((ancient Greece) a passionate hymn (usually in honor of Dionysus))

Greek; Hellenic; Hellenic language (the Hellenic branch of the Indo-European family of languages)

paean; pean ((ancient Greece) a hymn of praise (especially one sung in ancient Greece to invoke or thank a deity))

torch race ((ancient Greece) in which a torch is passed from one runner to the next)

souvlaki; souvlakia (made of lamb)

17 November; Revolutionary Organization 17 November (a Marxist-Leninist terrorist organization in Greece that is violently opposed to imperialism and capitalism and NATO and the United States; an active terrorist group during the 1980s)

ELA; Revolutionary People's Struggle (an extreme leftist terrorist group formed in Greece in 1971 to oppose the military junta that ruled Greece from 1967 to 1974; a revolutionary group opposed to capitalism and imperialism and the United States)

Holonyms ("Greece" is a part of...):

Europe (the 2nd smallest continent (actually a vast peninsula of Eurasia); the British use 'Europe' to refer to all of the continent except the British Isles)

Holonyms ("Greece" is a member of...):

Common Market; EC; EEC; EU; Europe; European Community; European Economic Community; European Union (an international organization of European countries formed after World War II to reduce trade barriers and increase cooperation among its members)

NATO; North Atlantic Treaty Organization (an international organization created in 1949 by the North Atlantic Treaty for purposes of collective security)

Sense 2

Meaning:

Ancient Greece; a country of city-states (especially Athens and Sparta) that reached its peak in the fifth century BCE

Classified under:

Nouns denoting spatial position

Hypernyms ("Greece" is a kind of...):

Balkan country; Balkan nation; Balkan state (any one of the countries on the Balkan Peninsula)

Credits

 Context examples: 

Some countries are more cautious, Belgium and Greece have set this limit at 3 volts/metre.

(Health threats caused by mobile phone radiation, EUROPARL TV)

“This young man could not talk a word of Greek. The lady could talk English fairly well. Inference, that she had been in England some little time, but he had not been in Greece.”

(The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

Researchers from Australia and Greece divided the children into two groups and instructed around half to eat two meals of cooked fatty fish (of at least 150 grams) as part of the Greek Mediterranean diet every week for six months.

(Fish-Rich Diet Beneficial for Children with Asthma, The Titi Tudorancea Bulletin)

If this rule were always observed; if no man allowed any pursuit whatsoever to interfere with the tranquillity of his domestic affections, Greece had not been enslaved, Cæsar would have spared his country, America would have been discovered more gradually, and the empires of Mexico and Peru had not been destroyed.

(Frankenstein, by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley)

It is clear that some time has elapsed since this Harold established these relations with the girl—some weeks, at any rate—since the brother in Greece has had time to hear of it and come across.

(The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)