Word.ws English Dictionary

Hellenist

/ˈhɛl.ɪ.nɪst/

Hellenist noun: a specialist in the study of Greek language, literature, culture, or history, or an admirer of the Greek culture and civilization.

Noun

Hellenist (plural Hellenists)

  1. A specialist in the study of Greek language, literature, culture, or history, or an admirer of the Greek culture and civilization.
    • But it is no objection to a programme of research that it encounters difficult cases, and Hellenists with a hand in each field may even decide such territorial disputes.2025 December 12, Tom Hercules Davies, “Horses, Wheels, Languages: Greek, Mesopotamian and Indic Epic on the Eurasian Steppe”, in The Classical Quarterly, volume 75, number 1, page 7
  2. A person who adopted the Greek customs, language and culture during the Hellenistic period, especially a Hellenized Jew.
  3. A non-Greek follower and practitioner of Hellenic religion (aka Hellenism)

Forms of Hellenist

pluralHellenists

Origin of Hellenist

From Ancient Greek ἑλληνιστής (hellēnistḗs, “somebody who speaks Greek”), from ἑλληνίζειν (hellēnízein, “to speak Greek, to behave like a Greek, to become Greek, hellenize”) (infinitive of ἑλληνίζω (hellēnízō)), from Ἕλλην (Héllēn, “Greek”).

Questions about Hellenist

What does Hellenist mean?
Hellenist means a specialist in the study of Greek language, literature, culture, or history, or an admirer of the Greek culture and civilization.
What part of speech is Hellenist?
Hellenist is a noun.
How do you pronounce Hellenist?
Hellenist is pronounced /ˈhɛl.ɪ.nɪst/ (UK).
What is the plural of Hellenist?
The plural of Hellenist is Hellenists.

Words near Hellenist in the dictionary

  1. hellenises
  2. hellenising
  3. Hellenism
  4. Hellenismos
  5. Hellenisms
  6. Hellenist
  7. Hellenistic
  8. Hellenistic Greek
  9. Hellenistic Koine
  10. Hellenistical
  11. Hellenistically

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: Hellenist (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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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Vealhurl-Hellenist.wav.

Cite this entry: “Hellenist.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/hellenist. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.