Word of the Day – DRACHMA

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DRACHMA \DRAK.muh\ n. a former monetary unit of Greece, pl. -S, -E, or -I

Word of the Day DRACHMA
As you can see, the word that actually appears on drachma currency is ΔΡΑΧΜΗ. This is where you get a little reward for taking the time to learn the Greek Alphabet a little while ago when we covered the Greek letter ETA!

The drachma has been used several times throughout Greek history, making its last appearance in 2002 when it was replaced by the euro.

In modern Greece, the drachma was subdivided into a unit called a LEPTON , worth 1/100th of a drachma. Lepton comes from the Greek leptos, meaning ‘small’, and was originally used to denote a small coin used in ancient times. Since then it has been used to subdivide whatever currency is in vogue. Even today, the lepton is Greece’s name for the euro-cent.

The 50 lepta coin below was printed when the lepton represented 1/100th of a PHOENIX, the basic Greek currency unit in use just before the modern drachma made its reappearance…

Word of the Day DRACHMA Lepta
In the 20th century, the particle physicists also decided to use this term to represent a family of elementary particles. In the currency context, the usual plural is LEPTA, while in the physics context the usual plural is LEPTONS.

But back to the drachma…

In ancient Greece, the drachma was divided into six OBOLI (sing. OBOLUS ) and it in turn divided the MINA into 100 parts. (Obolus also has the variant OBOL , pl. OBOLS)

There’s a lot more I could say about today’s word, but I’ll just throw in one more random tidbit. The plural DRACHMAI has the anagram CHADARIM, which is a plural of CHEDER, a Jewish school.

And one final tidbit for Collins/CSW/SOWPODS players. You get to play the unpronouncable MNA, a variant of the MINA I mentioned earlier.

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3 thoughts on “Word of the Day – DRACHMA”

  1. Thanks to David Sutton for pointing out a couple of errors in this post, which I’ve now corrected. CHADARIM should be the anagram of DRACHMAI, and OBOL has the Anglicized plural OBOLS. He also mentioned the similarly named OBOLE, which is a medieval French coin.

    • drachma leave off the a and you get drachm a unit of weight,
      COGNATE words with dram,dirham,dirhem,derham

      The centuries-old currency took its name from an ancient Greek word meaning to grab: a drachma was originally a fistful.(handful)

      there is also the possibility of playing tetradrachm(s)

      also didrachm didrachma

      I like this quote with pound in it
      1830 J. Galt Lawrie Todd I. ii. i. 87 In the choice of a second wife, one scruple of prudence is worth a pound of passion

      also antilepton

      note you can leave out the o in phoenix phenix is good

      maneh also for mina
      you gotta thing for boats Derek !

      • recently I stumbled on diobol

        and diobolon

        1887 B. V. Head Hist. Numorum 36 The well-known type of the Tarentine diobol, Herakles strangling the lion, recurs on diobols of Arpi, Cælia, Rubi, and Teate.

        1887 B. V. Head Hist. Numorum 36 The currency of Apulia‥consisted‥of silver diobols and didrachms of Tarentum.

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