it's Greek to me
I don't understand it
TRANSLATION
it's all Greek to me = ich verstehe nur Bahnhof --- GOOGLE INDEX it's all Greek to me: approximately 300,000 Google hits
STATISTICS
IN THE PRESS
Economic troubles? IT'S GREEK TO ME
(Finance and Commerce - Article Headline)
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State tax laws are all GREEK TO ME
(Chicago Tribune - Article Headline)
(Finance and Commerce - Article Headline)
---
State tax laws are all GREEK TO ME
(Chicago Tribune - Article Headline)
Did you
know?
it's all Greek to me
idiom
- a way of saying that you do not understand something that is said or written
(Cambridge Advanced Learner's Dictionary)
---
Despite the numerous words of Greek origin that can be found in English, we still insist on associating Greek with things that are difficult to understand.
Some claim that Shakespeare was the first to use this expression in Julius Caesar: "Those that understood him smiled at one another and shook their heads; but for mine own part, it was Greek to me."
It would then be easy to blame the English for coming up with this idiom. The truth is, it stems from the Latin proverb, "Graecum est; non potest legi," which literally means "It is Greek. It cannot be read." We merely translated it to English.
To be fair, other languages can be just as difficult. Mark Twain wrote an essay titled "The Awful German Language" in which he complains about the difficulty of finding the verb in a sentence, only to realise that it always comes at the end.
And someone accurately described how peculiar English can be when he said, "English is a funny language; that explains why we park our car on the driveway and drive our car on the parkway."
---
SMUGGLE OWAD into today's conversation
"The small print in this contract is Greek to me."
idiom
- a way of saying that you do not understand something that is said or written
(Cambridge Advanced Learner's Dictionary)
---
Despite the numerous words of Greek origin that can be found in English, we still insist on associating Greek with things that are difficult to understand.
Some claim that Shakespeare was the first to use this expression in Julius Caesar: "Those that understood him smiled at one another and shook their heads; but for mine own part, it was Greek to me."
It would then be easy to blame the English for coming up with this idiom. The truth is, it stems from the Latin proverb, "Graecum est; non potest legi," which literally means "It is Greek. It cannot be read." We merely translated it to English.
To be fair, other languages can be just as difficult. Mark Twain wrote an essay titled "The Awful German Language" in which he complains about the difficulty of finding the verb in a sentence, only to realise that it always comes at the end.
And someone accurately described how peculiar English can be when he said, "English is a funny language; that explains why we park our car on the driveway and drive our car on the parkway."
---
SMUGGLE OWAD into today's conversation
"The small print in this contract is Greek to me."
