Ancient Greek

Noun

ζῆλος • ‎(zêlos) m ‎(genitive ζήλου); second declension

1. eager rivalry, zealous imitation, emulation, a noble passion
   • Plato, Menexenus 242.A
   • Aristotle, Rhetoric 2.11.1
   • Hesiod, Works and Days 193
   • Lysias, Collected Works 195.13
   • Plato, Philebus 47.E
   • Plato, Philebus 50.B
   • Plato, Laws 679.C
   • Plato, The Republic 550.E
   1. (with genitive) zeal for one
      • Sophocles, Oedipus at Colonus 943
      • Plutarch, Theseus 25
      • Lucian, Demonax 57
   2. (with genitive)
      • Euripides, Hecuba 352
      • Lucian, The Ignorant Book-Collector 17
      • Plutarch, Coriolanus 4
      • Plutarch, Pericles 2
2. (passive) the object of emulation or desire, happiness, bliss, honour, glory
   • Sophocles, Ajax 503
   • Demosthenes, On the Crown 217
   • Demosthenes, On the Crown 120
   • Demosthenes, Against Aristocrates 64, (Compare On the Crown 273, Funeral Speech 33)
3. (of the style of Asiatic Orators) extravagance, fierceness
   • Strabo, Geography 648
   • Plutarch, Mark Antony 2
   • New Testament, Epistle to the Hebrews 10.27

Inflection

Derived terms

• ζηλοτυπία ‎(zēlotupía)
• ζηλότυπος ‎(zēlótupos)
• ζηλόω ‎(zēlóō)
• ζηλωτής ‎(zēlōtḗs)

Synonyms

• (eager rivalry): φθόνος ‎(phthónos)

References

• ζῆλος in Liddell & Scott (1940) A Greek–English Lexicon, Oxford: Clarendon Press
• ζῆλος in Liddell & Scott (1889) An Intermediate Greek–English Lexicon, New York: Harper & Brothers
• «ζῆλος» in Bailly, Anatole (1935) Le Grand Bailly: Dictionnaire grec-français, Paris: Hachette
• “G2205”, in Strong’s Exhaustive Concordance to the Bible, 1979
• Woodhouse, S. C. (1910) English-Greek Dictionary: A Vocabulary of the Attic Language, London: Routledge & Kegan Paul Limited.
  • admiration idem, page 12.
  • bliss idem, page 83.
  • competition idem, page 151.
  • emulation idem, page 269.
  • envy idem, page 279.
  • happiness idem, page 384.
  • rivalry idem, page 718.
• Beekes, Robert S. P. (2010) Etymological Dictionary of Greek (Leiden Indo-European Etymological Dictionary Series; 10), with the assistance of Lucien van Beek, Leiden, Boston: Brill