it's all Greek to me

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it's all Greek to me

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• it's Greek to me, that's Greek to me, that's all Greek to me

First quoted as “it was Greek to me” in Julius Caesar by Shakespeare, maybe translated from a Medieval Latin sentence.

• IPA^(key): /ɪts ˌɔːl ˈɡɹiːk tə ˌmiː/

• Audio (US):

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it's all Greek to me

1. (idiomatic) I don't understand any of it; it makes no sense.

   Synonyms: it's all Chinese to me, (I can’t) make head or tail of (it), double Dutch

   I tried reading the instructions, but it’s all Greek to me.

   • 1599 (first performance), William Shakespeare, “The Tragedie of Iulius Cæsar”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, →OCLC, [Act I, scene ii], page 112, column 1:

     But thoſe that vnderſtood him, ſmil'd at one another, and ſhooke their heads: but for mine owne part, it was Greeke to me.

   • [1653, Francis Rabelais [i.e., François Rabelais], translated by [Thomas Urquhart] and [Peter Anthony Motteux], The Works of Francis Rabelais, Doctor in Physick: Containing Five Books of the Lives, Heroick Deeds, and Sayings of Gargantua, and His Sonne Pantagruel. […], London: […] [Thomas Ratcliffe and Edward Mottershead] for Richard Baddeley, […], →OCLC; republished in volume II, London: […] Navarre Society […], [1948], →OCLC, book the fifth:

     During the processions they trilled and quavered most melodiously betwixt their teeth I do not know what antiphones, or chantings, by turns. For my part, ’twas all Hebrew-Greek to me, the devil a word I could pick out on’t;]

   • 1844, [Frederick] Marryat, chapter XI, in The Settlers in Canada. […], volume II, London: Longman, Brown, Green, & Longmans, […], →OCLC, pages 181–182:

     "Well," said Alfred, "it may be a letter, but I confess it is all Greek to me. I certainly do not see why you wish to keep it a secret. Tell me."

   • 1849, Herman Melville, “He is Initiated in the Business of Cleaning Out the Pig-pen, and Slushing Down the Top-mast”, in Redburn: His First Voyage. […], 1st American edition, New York, N.Y.: Harper & Brothers, […], →OCLC, page 45:

     I ran after him, and received an order to go aloft and “slush down the main-top mast.” This was all Greek to me, and after receiving the order, I stood staring about me, wondering what it was that was to be done.

   • 1904, George M. Fenn, The Ocean Cat's Paw:

     “Look here, Mr. Count,” he said; “I am only a rough Englishman, and a lot of what you have been saying about mission and that sort of thing is just so much Greek to me.”

   • 1907, H[erbert] G[eorge] Wells, The War in the Air: […], London: George Bell and Sons, published 1908, →OCLC:

     “It's more like some firm's paper. All this printed stuff at the top. Drachenflieger. Drachenballons. Ballonstoffe. Kugelballons. Greek to me.”

   • 1929, M[ohandas] K[aramchand] Gandhi, chapter VIII, in Mahadev Haribhai Desai and Pyarelal Nair, transl., The Story of My Experiments with Truth: Translated from the Original in Gujarati, volume II, Ahmedabad, Gujarat: Navajivan Press, →OCLC:

     A Parsi lawyer was examining a witness and asking him question regarding credit and debit entries in account books. It was all Greek to me.

   • 1965, Harry Ray Bannister, The Education of a Broadcaster, page 16:

     Cavanaugh explained the network-affiliate relationship, which of course was all Greek to me and remained so even after his explanation.

   • 2004, Jacob Taubes, The Political Theology of Paul, page 99:

     […] it was expected of me, or it was considered an honor, to lecture on seventeenth-century philosophy: Descartes (which was all Greek to me), Descartes to Spinoza.

• Mark Liberman (2009 January 15) “The directed graph of stereotypical incomprehensibility”, in Language Log‎^[1]