Hellas

Learned borrowing from Ancient Greek Ἑλλάς (Hellás, “Greece”). Doublet of Ellada.

• Rhymes: -ɛləs

Hellas

1. Greece; (specifically) Ancient Greece.
   • 1999 March, Sean McMeekin, “The Place that Launched a Thousand Ships”, in Literary Review:

     Modern Greece would not be Byzantium reborn. Rather, it was an imagined nation conjured up from ancient Hellas.

• Helladic

• as hell

• IPA^(key): [ˈɦɛlas]

Hellas f (relational adjective helladský)

1. Hellas (Greece, especially Ancient Greece)

   Synonym: Helada

• See Helén

• “Hellas”, in Příruční slovník jazyka českého (in Czech), 1935–1957
• “Hellas”, in Slovník spisovného jazyka českého (in Czech), 1960–1971, 1989

Borrowed from Ancient Greek Ἑλλάς (Hellás).

• (Classical Latin) IPA^(key): [ˈhɛl.las]
• (modern Italianate Ecclesiastical) IPA^(key): [ˈɛl.las]

Hellas f sg (genitive Helladis); third declension

1. (poetic) synonym of Graecia (“Greece”)
2. a female given name from Ancient Greek
   • 65 BCE – 8 BCE, Horace, Satires 2.3.276:

     Modo, inquam, Hellade percussa Marius cum praecipitat se cerritus fuit?

     The other day, for instance, when Marius killed Hellas and then flung himself headlong, was he crazy?

Third-declension noun, singular only.

• “Hellas”, in Charlton T. Lewis and Charles Short (1879) A Latin Dictionary, Oxford: Clarendon Press
• Hellas in Gaffiot, Félix (1934) Dictionnaire illustré latin-français, Hachette, page 739.
• Hellas in Georges, Karl Ernst, Georges, Heinrich (1913–1918) Ausführliches lateinisch-deutsches Handwörterbuch, 8th edition, volume 1, Hahnsche Buchhandlung
• “Hellas”, in William Smith, editor (1854, 1857), A Dictionary of Greek and Roman Geography, volume 1 & 2, London: Walton and Maberly

Directly borrowed from Greek Ελλάς (Ellás, “Greece”), possibly being influenced by Ancient Greek Ἑλλάς (Hellás, “Greece”), in 1932 to replace the Danish loanword and German cognate Grekenland as part of a trend to adopt endonyms as Norway was nation-building during the early 20th century and as a compromise during the early stages of the Norwegian language conflict, with Nynorsk and Samnorsk advocates rejecting the existing name and Grekerland, a calque of Swedish Grekland, only working in Bokmål (where Greek is greker, being grekar instead in Nynorsk). In the 1970s, the Norwegian Foreign Ministry attempted to reverse the name change to be more similar to other European countries. Although this movement gained enough momentum to make it to the Language Council of Norway, it was rejected by a majority of the Council.^[1]

Hellas n

1. Greece (a country in Southeast Europe)

• Greeklish

Borrowed as part of a language planning policy, in 1932, from Greek Ελλάς (Ellás), the Katharevousa form in use as Greek endonym at the time. This new form was intended to replace the conflicting forms in both Bokmål (Grekenland and Grekerland) and Nynorsk (Grekarland and Grekland) as part of the government's Samnorsk policy during the 1930s, which aimed to bring Bokmål and Nynorsk closer to each other, with the end goal of eventually merging them. Since the Bokmål form Grekenland was a Low German borrowing inherited via Danish Grækenland, it was excluded from Nynorsk in favour of Norwegian forms. Meanwhile, the Nynorsk form Grekarland was incompatible with Bokmål, while Grekerland was incompatible with Nynorsk (since "a Greek" is "ein grekar" in Nynorsk and "en greker" in Bokmål). Although the Samnorsk policy was abandoned by later governments, and the Katharevousa form Ελλάς (Ellás) was superseded as Greek endonym by Standard Modern Greek Ελλάδα (Elláda), the Samnorsk form Hellas remains the most widely used form in both Bokmål and Nynorsk, while the old nonstandard forms are used archaizingly in some contexts.

Hellas n

1. Greece (a country in Southeast Europe)