Kudos & Magical Glory

I don’t remember the first time I heard the word “kudos,” but I distinctly remember thinking that it was 1970’s slang.

How wrong I was! I only found out last week, though, that “kudos” goes all the way back to the days of Homer, meaning “magical glory” in ancient Greek.

This means, if someone says, “kudos, you did a great job at the game,” the original meaning was more like, “Magical glory! Man, you’ve been blessed by the gods. Great job.”

How cool is that?

There’s a fierce battle raging among linguists about this word (something I’d love to see in person). I go into details in episode 69 of the Vocabbett podcast!