all Greek to me
1
9.3
- idiom
- Informal
:
es griego para mí
- - It's all Greek to me.
Examples
-
She tried to describe her software project, but to me, it was all Greek to me.
-
It's all Greek to me.
-
It's all Greek to me.
-
It's all Greek to me.
-
It's all Greek to me.
-
I'd say this is all Greek to me.
Blog text (31) -
He frowned and shook his old, woolly head. "This is all Greek to me," he said, and chuckled.
Fiction book (2001) -
When the professor started explaining quantum physics, I realized it was all Greek to me.
-
The legal document was filled with jargon that was completely Greek to me.
Synonyms
∞
8.6
Not clear enough to understand
46
8.8
Difficult or impossible to understand
14
8.3
Very hard to understand
8
8.8
Too hard to read or understand
1
9.1
Very hard to read or understand
1
8.6
Difficult to understand even after thinking about it
1
8.2
Not possible to understand or explain
Hard to understand or explain
Antonyms
Surface Forms
Morphology
The phrase relies on a cultural/metaphorical use of a language name: knowing 'all', 'Greek' and 'me' gives a clue that the speaker compares something to the Greek language, implying it is unintelligible. This link (foreign language = incomprehensible) exists cross-linguistically but is not strictly compositional, so a B1 learner might guess the gist but would not fully derive the idiomatic meaning without exposure.
Etymology
The idiom all Greek to me comes from the image of looking at words written in Greek that you cannot read, so the letters seem strange and confusing. So, people use it to say something is 'completely not understandable'.