what's the meaning of earth in greek?? please answer fast
Answers
Greek has a number of words for “earth”, each with a slightly different nuance.
Most common among them is, of course, γαῖα (gaia), which you may have heard from the personification of the earth in Greek mythology. However, if we peer further into the past, older Greek texts in antiquity use the word as “land, nation”. Homer is one example (I will cite him in a minute).
A few other variations of gaia are also present, such as γῆ (gē), which is still used in modern Greek (though now it is pronounced a little differently), but was also used by ancient Greek authors. We can find it in Homer, though rarely, and more frequently in Hesiod. It is used in Attic prose as a substitute for γαῖα (gaia).
Another variation of gaia is γᾶ (gā), the Doric and Aeolic version of γῆ (gē).
Yet another variation of gaia is, believe it or not, αἶα (aia, without the “γ”, i.e., without the Greek letter gamma). This form of “gaia” is often used in epic poetry, and you can find it in the work of the greats: Aeschylus, Euripides, Homer. In fact, to keep the promise I made on the 2nd paragraph, this is where I would like to cite the latter, as there is a telling excerpt by him. It is in the book 3 of the Iliad, which recounts the duel between Paris and Menelaus (I trust you know how it ends):
From: Troy (2004).
:-)
Here is the excerpt:
τούς δ᾽ ἤδη κάτεχεν φυσίζοος αἶα ἐν Λακεδαίμονι αὖθι φίλῃ ἐν πατρίδι γαίῃ.
- Hom. Il. 3.243
It is telling because it shows Homer using both words, gaia and aia, in the same sentence. This goes to show that, without previous knowledge, one might be inclined to say the words mean the exact same thing, but it is clearly not the case. I translate it as follows:
But already they lied on the life-giving earth (i.e., they were already dead) in the very Lacedemon, their dear native land.
It should be noted, however, that when spelled with a capital letter (Αἶα, Aia), it stands for the ancient region of Colchis, as it’s its original name.
Apart from these 4 words for “earth”, there are two others which are important and show up in the classics: ἔρα (era) and χθών (chthon).
The first, ἔρα (era), is also used by Homer, and means, more or less, “surface of the earth”, but is also used simply as “earth”. In the Odyssey, for example, Homer says:
ἐν δέ πόδεσσι τίλλε πέλειαν ἔχων, κατά δέ πτερά χεῦεν ἔραζε μεσσηγύς νηός τε καί αὐτοῦ Τηλεμάχοιο.
- Hom. Od. 15.527
The sentence is about a hawk, the messenger of Apollo. I translate it roughly as follows:
With a dove in its talons, [the hawk] plucked [the dove] and shed its feathers down on the ground midway between the ship and Telemachus himself.
Other authors, like Strabo and Hesiod, use it too. However, it shouldn’t be confused with Ἥρᾱ (Hera), the goddess of women, marriage, family, and childbirth.
The last word, χθών (chthon), also means “surface of the earth”, though sometimes simply “ground, soil”. It’s very poetic, therefore you’ll see it in lyric poetry and paratragedies (the latter are basically parodies of tragedy or satyr drama), but only very rarely in prose. Homer uses it both in the Iliad and the Odyssey (e.g., Od. 8.375: “ὁ δ᾽ ἀπό χθονός ὑψόσ᾽ ἀερθείς ῥηιδίως μεθέλεσκε, πάρος ποσίν οὖδας ἱκέσθαι”), and from that we get English “chthonian” and “chthonic”, as in the now formulaic combination “chthonic gods” — earth-related deities, often of the underworld. The Latin counterpart for this is telluric.