hoplite
/ˈhɒplaɪt/
hoplite noun: a heavily-armed infantry soldier of Ancient Greece, wielding a one-handed spear and an aspis.
Noun
hoplite (plural hoplites)
- A heavily-armed infantry soldier of Ancient Greece, wielding a one-handed spear and an aspis.
- […] it was in the line of "hoplites" that the mass of citizen-soldiers were to be found.1879, F. D. Morice, Pindar, chapter 4, page 45
- However important the use of hoplites against, or in support of, troops of other arms had become, their chief function was still to fight other hoplites, though the battles of the early fourth century were very different from the ponderous confrontations that had filled King Xerxes and his...1970, John Kinloch Anderson, Military Theory and Practice in the Age of Xenophon, page 141
Examples of hoplite in a sentence
- The Athenian hoplites who routed the Persian invaders on the field of Marathon in 490 created one of the great 'myths' of Athens.1991, R. K. Sinclair, Democracy and Participation in Athens, page 5:
- Yet this war of ideals was also a war of many truces, for there were many grounds for accommodation between generals and hoplites.2006, J. E. Lendon, Soldiers and Ghosts: A History of Battle in Classical Antiquity, unnumbered page:
Forms of hoplite
| plural | hoplites |
|---|
Origin of hoplite
From Ancient Greek ὁπλίτης (hoplítēs, “heavily armed foot-soldier”), from ὅπλον (hóplon, “arms, armor, weapon”) (from which English hopl-). Compare Latin hoplomachus (“gladiator”).
Words formed from hoplite
Questions about hoplite
- What does hoplite mean?
- Hoplite means a heavily-armed infantry soldier of Ancient Greece, wielding a one-handed spear and an aspis.
- How do you use hoplite in a sentence?
- The Athenian hoplites who routed the Persian invaders on the field of Marathon in 490 created one of the great 'myths' of Athens.
- What part of speech is hoplite?
- Hoplite is a noun.
- How do you pronounce hoplite?
- Hoplite is pronounced /ˈhɒplaɪt/.
- What is the plural of hoplite?
- The plural of hoplite is hoplites.
Words near hoplite in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: hoplite (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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Cite this entry: “hoplite.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/hoplite. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.