(Piano music) 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!

Happy Halloween, let the spooky words in! Today’s word is not used very often in English and it’s more likely you’ll find it written than spoken, unless you want to be very dramatic in which case Halloween is the perfect time for it! In Ancient Greece If you wanted to enter the underworld, Hades , you had to cross 5 rivers. Αχερων (Acheron) the river of death , Κωκυτός (kokitos) the river of woe ,Πυριφλεγέθων (piriflegethon) also known as simply Φλεγέθων (flegethon) the river of fire , Lethe which I’ve spoken about in its own episode , the river of memory and forgetfulness, and Styx the river of hate. There is no particular order to enter Hades but Styx and Acheron are mentioned mostly as the first two. Styx was a titan, a goddess and a river that the gods swore in. It’s mentioned in the odyssey, the Iliad and has countless literary mentions from around the world. Styx ran from the underworld to a mountain side above the ground and that was an entry point to Hades. Her story as a goddess is for another episode but the adjective in English is used to describe anything dark and abominable. In modern Greek it means ‘ruthless’ ΣΤΥΓΕΡΟ/STYGIAN

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