entry
damascus
/dəˈmæskəs/Ancient Syrian city name; also Damascus steel
From Greek Damaskos (Damascus).
from Greek Damaskos
from Latin Damascus
from Latin Damascus
from Latin Damascus
from Latin Damascus
Word Ancestry
from Greek Damaskos
from Latin Damascus
from Latin Damascus
from Latin Damascus
from Latin Damascus
Damascus is one of those names that sounds like it ought to belong on a map older than memory, and in a way it does. Greeks wrote it as Damaskos, Romans kept it as Damascus, and medieval Europeans knew it not just as a city but as the home of the legendary steel that flashed out of smithies like something half-mythical. The strange part is that the trail runs out before the city does: Hebrew Dammeseq and Arabic Dimashq point to an even older name, probably pre-Semitic and stubbornly obscure. That makes Damascus a linguistic fossil with no clean label, the kind of place-name that has outlived the languages that first tried to explain it. If you want a word that feels ancient because it has earned the feeling, this is it.
The Story
Damascus is one of those names that sounds like it ought to belong on a map older than memory, and in a way it does. Greeks wrote it as Damaskos, Romans kept it as Damascus, and medieval Europeans knew it not just as a city but as the home of the legendary steel that flashed out of smithies like something half-mythical. The strange part is that the trail runs out before the city does: Hebrew Dammeseq and Arabic Dimashq point to an even older name, probably pre-Semitic and stubbornly obscure. That makes Damascus a linguistic fossil with no clean label, the kind of place-name that has outlived the languages that first tried to explain it. If you want a word that feels ancient because it has earned the feeling, this is it.
Kin & Kindred
From 'Damaskos'·Damascus, the ancient city name
Derived Terms
English words from this root