What does the prefix "mara" in "marathon" mean?
What does the prefix "mara" in "marathon" mean? Could someone please provide an answer?
1 Answers
Mara is not a prefix in this case. Marathon refers to a location from the story of the Greek hero Pheidippides, who in 490 B.C.E. ran 26 miles and 385 yards from the Plains of Marathon to Athens to announce the allied Greek victory over the Persian army.
The original account, as recorded by Herodotus, states that he ran from Athens to Sparta to seek aid, which arrived too late to participate in the battle.
The marathon was introduced as an athletic event in the 1896 revival of the Olympic Games, based on a later, less credible story, and the term quickly came to mean "any very long event or activity." The place name literally translates to "fennel field."
The name Mara, on the other hand, means "bitter" in Hebrew. This name was adopted by Naomi in the Old Testament.
See a table of Greek prefixes and their basic meanings from USU.edu.
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