Word.ws English Dictionary

beware of Greeks bearing gifts

beware of Greeks bearing gifts proverb: one should not trust one's enemies.

Proverb

beware of Greeks bearing gifts

  1. One should not trust one's enemies.

Origin of beware of Greeks bearing gifts

Alludes to the ancient story of the Trojan horse, a gift for the Trojans which secretly contained Greeks. The prototype of the phrase is found in a Latin phrase in the Aeneid, book 2, lines 48–49: equō nē crēdite, Teucrī. / Quidquid id est, timeō Danaōs et dōna ferentēs. (“Do not trust the horse, Trojans. Whatever it is, I fear the Greeks, even bearing gifts.”)

Questions about beware of Greeks bearing gifts

What does beware of Greeks bearing gifts mean?
Beware of Greeks bearing gifts means one should not trust one's enemies.
What part of speech is beware of Greeks bearing gifts?
Beware of Greeks bearing gifts is a proverb.

Words near beware of Greeks bearing gifts in the dictionary

  1. bewandering
  2. bewanders
  3. beward
  4. bewards
  5. beware
  6. beware of Greeks bearing gifts
  7. bewared
  8. bewares
  9. bewaring
  10. bewarm
  11. bewarred

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: beware of Greeks bearing gifts (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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