Unless you attend one of the Jesuit-run schools in Ireland you are unlikely to encounter the ancient Greek language.
Very few, if any, students sit Greek in the Leaving Cert.
One result of this lack of classical education is that most people do not realise that a huge proportion of the words we use in everyday speech are of Greek origin.
I once met a supercilious Englishman in Dublin who pointed to a phone kiosk and said very patronisingly, “The Irish can’t even find their own word for a telephone – they have to take one from us.”
I asked if he encountered guthán whether he would be any further forward and he looked very nonplussed.
I then explained that both parts of the word are Greek in origin – “tele” meaning “from afar” and “phone” meaning “sound”: sound from afar, just as “telegraph” and “telescope” are words the Greeks have given us. But not “television”.
As some wit once observed, nothing good ever came of combining a Greek word with a Latin one – which is why “television” and “automobile” have been such abject failures in the marketplace. So I have listed 100-plus words which are in common use not only in the English-speaking world but in many other tongues. I’ve added a few words of explanation where that seems necessary.
Agony and aristocracy
A: agony (agon is a contest, hence antagonism, protagonist), amnesia, anarchy, anemometer (from anemos meaning "wind": read your Samuel Beckett); angel (angelos was a messenger), anthropology, apathy (without feeling), apothecary (originally, someone in charge of a storehouse – apothiki is still in daily use meaning "storage"); aristocracy, arithmetic; auto (self): almost all words starting with "auto" such as autobiography, automaton, autograph but not automobile.
B: barbarian (meaning non-Greek, from the "bar-bar" noise they make); bibliography, bibliophile (biblos being the word for book, hence Bible).
C: cancer, carcinoma, catastrophe, catharsis, chronology, chthonic (meaning "of the earth" – if you don't use this everyday, you should try it), cosmos (world, and from this we get cosmology, cosmonaut, microcosm); critic (originally, a judge), cryogenics (cryo means icy-cold; remember Austin Powers?); cybernetics (literally, "steering"), cycle, cyclone.
D: decathlon (and, for that matter, triathlon and pentathlon), democracy, dendrology (the science of trees), dipsomania, dogma, draconian (after the Athenian dictator, Draco).
E: economics, electron, encephalograph (kephalos is head), epiphany, ethics, euphemism.
F: frenetic (originally meaning "attacking the mind"). Not many "F" words come to us from Greek.
G: genesis, genetics, geometry.
H: heliocentric (helios being the sun), hero, hexagon (also pentagon, octagon); hologram, anything beginning with hydro (water); hypnosis (from hypno, "I sleep"); hypochondria, hypodermic, hypothesis, hysteria (anything to do with the womb, eg hysterectomy).
K: kallipygous (something many men admire everyday, but don't know it: having attractive buttocks), kallisthenics (kalo meaning anything beautiful), kilo, kinetic energy, kleptomania.
L: leukaemia, lithograph (literally, writing on stone).
M: mania (madness), mastectomy, megalomania (megalos is big; strange that there isn't a "micromania" – thinking small); melanoma, metamorphosis, microscope, monogamy (and anything ending with gamos meaning marriage, including polygamy), monolithic.
N: nostalgia (the pain algos of the homeward journey, nostos; from algos we also derive neuralgia).
O: onomatopoeia (the making of words from the sound they make, onoma being name).
P: parthenogenesis (asexual reproduction: maybe you don't use it every single day, but a useful one to have up your lexicon), pathology (most words using path- as a prefix or -path as a suffix, such as psychopath or pathetic), pharmacy, philately (love of postage stamps – although the Greeks didn't do it themselves, they gave us the words), philanthropy (love of one's fellow men, hard to find these days), philosophy (love of wisdom), phobia, photograph (literally, writing with light, a beautiful concept), photosynthesis, poet/poetry (a poet is a "maker"), polemics, politics, pseudo-, psychology (any word beginning with psycho – or any film for that matter – has to do with the psyche).
R: raphe (meaning a groove or seam – okay, not quite an everyday word, but the classical Greek language had very few words beginning with "R"; the same lame excuse goes for rachis, meaning an axis or spine); rhapsody (originally, a recitation of poetry), rhetoric, rhythm.
S: sporadic (from the Sporades islands in the Aegean Sea, including Rhodes, which are all over the place), synchronise, synergy , sympathy, symphony.
Taxidermy and thesaurus
T: taxidermy, therapy (therapos meaning "tending the sick" – so, any similar term such as physiotherapy, psychotherapy), thermos ("heat", hence thermometer), thesaurus (originally, a treasure house), topography, tragedy (literally, "a goat's song" – read Dermot Healy's wonderful novel of that title).
X: xenophobia (a pity, really, that the so-welcoming Greeks, who suffer, if at all, from xenophilia, should also have given rise to this word).
Z: zoology, the study of life.