Greek to me
Meaning
This phrase describes something that is completely incomprehensible or unintelligible to a person, often due to its complexity or foreign nature.
Origin
The notion of Greek as an impenetrable language to outsiders traces back to ancient Rome. While Latin was the lingua franca, Greek remained a language of high culture and philosophy, yet it was often inscrutable to the average Roman. Medieval scholars, when faced with Greek texts they couldn't translate, would famously scribble "Graecum est; non legitur" – "It is Greek; it cannot be read" – in the margins, acknowledging their inability to comprehend. The phrase truly took root in the English consciousness thanks to William Shakespeare. In his play Julius Caesar, when Casca describes Cicero speaking in Greek, he quips, "for mine own part, it was Greek to me," a line that instantly cemented the idiom's place as the perfect expression for anything utterly baffling.
Examples
- When the professor started explaining advanced calculus, it was all Greek to me, and I couldn't follow a single equation.
- I tried to read the instructions for assembling the new gadget, but they were Greek to me, so I just gave up and watched a video tutorial.