Interview on NPR’s Weekend All Things Considered about the expression “It’s all Greek to me.” (July 5, 2015)
Shakespeare lovers are well aware this phrase comes from the Bard — or, well, partly. Ben Zimmer, a language columnist for the Wall Street Journal, says that Shakespeare is probably responsible for the popularity of the phrase.
“It appears in his play Julius Caesar,” he says. “There’s a character who’s describing the speech of Cicero, who is a learned scholar; he actually knew Greek. But this character didn’t really understand what Cicero was saying, and he says, ‘For mine own part, it was Greek to me.’ ”
But Shakespeare didn’t actually come up with the phrase “it’s all Greek to me.” The phrase appeared in a translation of an Italian play decades earlier.
(Show page, audio, related Word Routes column)