The Secret Meaning of the Word "Writer" in Greek

There are two kinds of people who fully realize the importance of words and the power that lies in their hidden meaning: writers and politicians. Even though both base their careers on the use of appropriate words, the former are not nearly as dangerous as the latter in the case they succeed.

Since words are so important to writers, what about the word ‘writer’ itself? In English it just denotes ‘a person who writes’: a scribe, a scribbler. It’s meaning is all too logical and plain. Even the word ‘author’, deriving from the Latin verb ‘augere’ (to create something original, to increase, or to build up) which gives us ‘auctor’ (‘autor’ in old French, hence the modern English ‘author’), merely signifies a creator of original work. It's not a bad definition per se but, somehow, falls short of quite nailing it.

In Greek, however, the word ‘writer’ is so much more than just a job description.

A writer, in modern Greek, is called 'συγγραφέας’ (sigraféas). This word has remained virtually unaltered in the Greek language since at least the 5th century BC. ‘Συγγραφέας’ is a composite word, comprised of ‘συν’ (sin being a prefix signifying ‘with’ or ‘together with’, ‘in coalition’, equivalent to the Latin ‘cum’ which gives us the modern English ‘co’, as in cofounder, colleague, etc.) and ‘γραφέας’ (graféas), literally meaning ‘scribe’ or ‘person who writes’.

Therefore, a ‘συγγραφέας’ is a ‘writer who writes with or alongside someone or something else’. Literally, a ‘co-writer’. And that’s where things get bizarre and interesting.

At first glance this is quite an absurd definition of the word writer, since writers work predominantly alone and a great deal of their process of word and idea formulation takes place in the solitude of their mind.

Many explanations have been put forth in the attempt of deciphering this semantic riddle: Some say that it merely echoes the practice of some ancient writers who would dictate their work to professional scribes –classical antiquity’s equivalent of Microsoft Word. A more modern view claims that this mysterious semantically-implied 'company' of the writer is the hypothetical reader –the abstract idea of the person to whom the work will be addressed once it’s completed.

In my opinion, we have to dig deeper in order to get to the truth of the matter.

The most ancient Greek writers, Homer and Hesiod, begin their works with an invocation to the Muses, the deities presiding over Arts and Letters. In effect, they call upon these divine beings to guide their scribbling hand and grant them the gift of elegant, vivid and appropriate words.

In other words, the Muses are the personification of that ‘force’ or ‘mental energy’ we call today ‘inspiration’ or even 'intellectual labour' .

A συγγραφέας, therefore, is not a mere scribe. He is more than a writer. He is someone who has tapped into that hidden potential of his creative faculties: someone who can read what is already there on the blank page and give it flesh and bones through the medium of words.

Sure enough, trivial work is a large part of writing. One inevitably uses the rules of grammar and has to navigate through the nuances of vocabulary to best capture the abstract images they want to convey to their reader. Yet truly great writing, as all authors attest, flows out of its creator. It is original and at the same time it is as if it preexisted in some obscure recess of the creator's mind.

From personal experience, I can tell you that it’s a very subtle sensation. It’s like receiving dictation from one’s self or being given a manuscript written in images and emotions. Once your mind’s eye has been opened to its pages, the words flow out of your fingertips to give it corporeal form; one capable of coherently communicating it to the reader.

A good writer is one who is adept at entering that state of consciousness and reading the still-unborn manuscript, transcribing it into means visible to the physical senses. A bad one is simply someone who doesn’t yet have the skill to recount vividly and accurately what they have seen.

I like to think that a writer’s work is never entirely their own. It has been given to them ‘from above’ or 'from within', as the old philosophers would say. Still, writers are not mere receptacles, babbling oracles. They coalesce and harmoniously work together with the unseen world to bring forth its pearls into this narrow strip of consciousness which we so arbitrarily call ‘reality’.

Even when in solitude, the writer is never alone. This subtle secret has been coded into the Greek word for over twenty-five centuries. And I, for one, find it peculiarly uplifting.