Athens Academy Expands Greek Dictionary to 75,500 Entries

The Academy of Athens presented the revised and expanded second edition of its Dictionary of Modern Greek on Tuesday evening, November 3, featuring more than 500 new entries reflecting contemporary scientific discoveries, technological developments and social changes.

Academician and Professor Emeritus of Linguistics at the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, Christoforos Charalambakis, who led the preparation of the second edition, concluded the presentation ceremony at the Academy’s ceremonial hall with a message about the importance of preserving and nurturing the Greek language.

“Our love for language must be proportional to our love for people and must manifest itself through everyday actions,” he said.

Diamantouros: Language evolves alongside people

Representatives of the Armed Forces leadership, the Church, political, scientific and journalistic communities, as well as numerous academics, attended the presentation.

Academy of Athens President Nikiforos Diamantouros opened the ceremony, emphasising the relationship between language, collective memory and human experience.

“Every word carries something of the way a people have seen, felt and interpreted the world,” he said.

He described language as a living creation that evolves alongside people, adding that the new dictionary occupies a point where memory meets creativity.

“The challenge is to observe other worlds and engage with other languages without losing our own voice,” Diamantouros said.

Academy of Athens Secretary-General Antonios Regkakos highlighted the significance of the publication as the institution marks the centenary of its establishment.

He said the Academy’s dictionary represents an important contribution to scholarship and serves not only the academic community but everyone interested in understanding the Greek language more deeply.

Regkakos also congratulated everyone involved in completing the new edition.

Former Academy president Michalis Tiverios then recalled a significant episode in the institution’s history involving the Historical Dictionary of Modern Greek.

He referred to the 1927 resignation letter of Dimitrios Aigin itis, who had drafted the resolution establishing the Academy of Athens on March 18, 1926.

The resignation followed a dispute after Georgios Hatzidakis, the pioneer of the Historical Dictionary and a founding figure of Greek linguistics, arranged to accommodate the dictionary’s editorial staff in two of the Academy building’s five available rooms.

The incident threatened the newly established institution, whose future remained uncertain following the fall of the Pangalos dictatorship. Within weeks, however, a presidential decree formally placed the Historical Dictionary under the Academy’s jurisdiction, recognising its institutional role and effectively legitimising its existence.

Former Academy Secretary-General Christos Zerefos subsequently discussed the ongoing challenge of keeping dictionaries up to date. Drawing on examples from environmental science, he highlighted the need to incorporate emerging terminology into everyday language.

He noted that the new edition includes approximately 500 neologisms, including specialised scientific terms that have gradually entered common usage.

Charalambakis pays tribute to his collaborators

Charalambakis concluded the ceremony by thanking the 35 collaborators who helped him complete the dictionary after 12 years of work.

He also paid tribute to those who supported him throughout the project, including Konstantinos Despotopoulos, Nikolaos Konomis and Vassilios H. Petrakos.

The second edition introduces more than 500 new entries reflecting contemporary scientific discoveries and social developments.

New words and expressions include terms relating to anti-vaccination movements, digital technology, cryptocurrencies, the coronavirus, homophobia, overtourism, climate phenomena and changing social customs.

Among the additions are the Greek equivalents or transliterations of terms such as anti-vaxxer, Viber, Excel, cryptocurrency, lesbophobia, PowerPoint, overtourism and snowstorm.

The dictionary now contains approximately 75,500 entries and fixed lexical combinations. The entry for the verb kano(to do/make) alone includes 220 additional expressions, such as kano mathima (give or attend a lesson), kano parti(have a party) and kano petra tin kardia mou (harden my heart).

17 innovations in the revised dictionary

According to the Academy of Athens, the second edition introduces 17 innovations.

Among the most significant are:

• Compiling entries using extensive printed and electronic databases, with statistical frequency serving as a key selection criterion.
• Introducing alternative spellings for certain words.
• Systematically including the scientific names of animals and plants for the first time in a Modern Greek dictionary.
• Providing a more detailed presentation of how words combine with other words.
• Offering precise stylistic classifications for words and expressions.
• Recording the earliest known appearances of many words, particularly those of English and French origin, as well as established expressions, helping readers understand the history of culture and science.

The editors have also substantially expanded the dictionary’s treatment of word combinations. For example, the entry for apantisi (answer) now includes eight additional adjectives alongside the original 25, including self-evident, clarifying, indirect, indicative, clear, delayed, detailed and obvious.

The new edition also incorporates hundreds of additional or more detailed etymologies and identifies the original meanings of numerous words that later became established as translation equivalents.

Three introductory essays, written by Michalis A. Tiverios, former Academy Secretary-General Christos S. Zerefos and current Secretary-General Antonios Regkakos, examine the dictionary’s academic and cultural significance. The publication also retains the original foreword from the 2014 first edition, written by Vassilios H. Petrakos.

Two-volume publication with 75,500 entries

The second edition of the Dictionary of Modern Greek comprises two large-format volumes with a new typesetting design.

The first volume, covering entries from Alpha to Lambda, contains 1,129 pages, while the second, covering Mu to Omega, contains 1,028 pages. Together, the volumes comprise 2,157 pages and weigh approximately 4.4 kilograms.

The publishers used Specialprint 60 gsm paper. They printed the entries and fixed lexical combinations in bold blue lettering and arranged the text in three columns to improve readability.

The Academy’s bookstore, located opposite its historic building at 25-29 Panepistimiou Street, sells the two-volume set for €70, below production cost.

Gutenberg Publications handled the design, typesetting, printing and binding. Yiannis Mamais supervised the overall production, while the Centre for Research into Modern Greek Dialects and Idioms, under director Io Manolessou, undertook the philological editing.

Academy establishes a language observatory

Alongside the new edition, the Academy of Athens is establishing a Language Observatory to monitor the evolution of Greek, with particular emphasis on vocabulary and semantics.

The initiative aims to provide the public with reliable information about language usage and support teachers of Modern Greek as a first, second or foreign language.

The Academy has also made the dictionary available online free of charge since February 9, 2023, through its collaboration with the Centre for the Greek Language.

Academician Antonios Regkakos became president of the Centre in June 2026.

The online dictionary is available at:

https://christikolexiko.academyofathens.gr/index.php

(Source: AMNA)

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