Tuesday, May 5, 2026

Greek Proverbs: May 5

Here are today's Greek proverbs with LOLCats! These are repeats of previous proverbs, but now with illustrations... and with a quiz too! See how you do on the questions up top, and then try them again down below after you've read through the proverbs (the quiz results display only at the blog, not in the email):

Ὕπαγε ὀπίσω μου, ______.
reveal/hide answerὝπαγε ὀπίσω μου, Σατανᾶ.

Γνοὺς ______.
reveal/hide answerΓνοὺς πρᾶττε.

______ νόει.
reveal/hide answerἈκούσας νόει.

Ἄνω κάτω ______.
reveal/hide answerἌνω κάτω πάντα.

______ ὀρνίθων.
reveal/hide answerΓάλα ὀρνίθων.


Ὕπαγε ὀπίσω μου, Σατανᾶ.
Get behind me, Satan.
The words are from the Gospel of Mark, when Jesus rebukes Peter, a scene that is repeated in the Gospel of Matthew. The phrase later became part of the Catholic ritual of exorcism; see Wikipedia: Get Behind Me, Satan and also Wikipedia; Vade Retro, Satana.



Γνοὺς πρᾶττε.
Act on your knowledge.
I haven't translated the aorist participle literally, replacing it instead with a prepositional phrase. It's hard to know what to do those aorist participles in English! There's also a case to be made for rendering it as a verb in the same mood as the main verb: Learn, and act! This is one of the Delphic maxims recorded by Stobaeus. You can find out more at Wikipedia.



Ἀκούσας νόει.
After having listened, think.
This is another one of those maxims from Stobaeus. Note that it is the accent which tells you this is the imperative of a contract verb, νοέω: νόει. The 3rd-person indicate is νοεῖ. The verb in turn is from the noun νοῦς, "mind." You can see this root in English "noetic."



Ἄνω κάτω πάντα.
Everything is topsy-turvy.
You have two adverbs here: ἄνω, meaning "upwards," and κάτω, meaning "downwards." Those words are already familiar to you from their prepositional forms, ἀνά and κατά. This was a popular phrase in ancient Greek; you can see it used here in Demosthenes's speech Against Aristogiton.



Γάλα ὀρνίθων.
The milk of birds.
This is something that only a fool would seek: you can't get milk from a bird. Compare donkey's wool in a proverb you saw in an earlier blog post: Ὄνου πόκους ζητεῖς. From Greek ὄρνις we get ornithology, and from γάλα we get galaxy, as in the Milky Way Galaxy.



Ὕπαγε ὀπίσω μου, ______.
reveal/hide answerὝπαγε ὀπίσω μου, Σατανᾶ.

Γνοὺς ______.
reveal/hide answerΓνοὺς πρᾶττε.

______ νόει.
reveal/hide answerἈκούσας νόει.

Ἄνω κάτω ______.
reveal/hide answerἌνω κάτω πάντα.

______ ὀρνίθων.
reveal/hide answerΓάλα ὀρνίθων.


And to finish up, here's a random proverb and a random LOLCat too:




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