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Hello and welcome to Your Greek Word On A Sunday, a weekly, bite-size podcast for anyone curious on language, etymology and connections. I am your host, Emmanuela Lia and wherever you are in the world, if you want to entertain your brain for a few minutes, this is the podcast for you. Let's Go! 

Every ancient culture has a myth about a flood that wipes out humanity. And so did the ancient Greeks. When Zeus decided that humans were corrupt, he sent a flood to drown Greece but he saved two people he thought were worth saving; King Δευκαλιων (Defkalion) and his Queen Πύρρα (Pirra). They built a boat and travelled for nine days until they reached Delphi. There, they asked the oracle how they could rebuild humanity. The oracle said 'you have to cover your faces and throw the mother's intestines behind your backs' , Oh, they both understood, so they covered their faces and started walking, picking up stones from Mother Earth and throwing them behind them. Wherever a stone landed, a human appeared. And so, humanity was saved. Or that's how the myth goes anyway. Κατά (kata) is a preposition meaning 'downward' and κλυζείν (klizin) is the ancient Greek infinitive meaning 'to flood' . The combined word came to English through religious texts from France in the early 1600s. ΚΑΤΑΚΛΥΣΜΟΣ/CATACLYSM

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