Odyssey

How to spell odyssey

7 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce odyssey

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does odyssey mean?

1. nounA long, eventful journey or series of experiences, often marked by changes and discoveries.

Odyssey in a sentence

• Their three-month odyssey across the continent tested every plan they had made.

• Recovering from the injury became a slow personal odyssey of setbacks and small wins.

Where does odyssey come from?

Language of origin: Greek

This word comes straight from Greek myth and literature. It is drawn from Odysseia, the title of Homer's ancient epic poem composed around the eighth century BC, which recounts the ten-year voyage home of the hero Odysseus after the fall of Troy. The Greek name Odysseus passed into Latin as Ulixes (the source of the alternative English form Ulysses), but the poem's own title kept the Greek shape that gives us the modern spelling. English borrowed odyssey only in the late sixteenth century, at first purely as the name of the poem, and the broader sense of any long, wandering, adventurous journey did not become common until the 1800s. The single d followed by the double s is the spelling trap, and it traces directly back to the Greek original, where the doubled sigma and single delta were already in place.

How the word is built

• Odyss- (from Odysseus, the Greek hero)
• -ey (from the Greek title Odysseia)