The Etymology of Polyglot

    Figure 1:  A tongue that I quickly sketched, and then edited in photoshop.

The Ancient-Greek 1st-and-2nd-declension adjective:

πολύς, πολλή, πολύ

, or, when transliterated:
‘polús, pollḗ, polú,’
means:
‘many,’
.  The Ancient-Greek 1st-declension feminine noun:
ἡ γλῶσσα, τῆϛ γλώσσης,
or, when transliterated:
‘hē glȭssa, tē̃s glṓssēs’
means:
‘the tongue’
.  In the Attic dialect, the spelling of:
‘hē glȭssa,’
is:
ἡ γλῶττα, τῆϛ γλώττης
, or, when transliterated:
‘hē glȭtta, tē̃s glṓttēs’
.
We derive our English noun:
‘polyglot,’
, which is a speaker of many languages, from our combining of the Ancient-Greek adjective:
‘polús,’
which means:
‘many’
, with the Ancient-Greek noun:
‘glȭtta’
, which means:
‘tongue’
.

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