Basileus

Basileus (Greek ????????) means "king". It is perhaps best known in English as a title used by Byzantine monarchs, but also has a longer history of use in Ancient Greece.

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The etymology of "basileus" is unclear. The Mycenaean form was gwasileus (qa-si-re-u), denoting some sort of court official or local "boss", but not an actual king. Most linguists assume that it is a non-Greek word that was adopted by Bronze Age Greeks from a preexisting linguistic substrate of the Eastern Mediterranean. Schindler (1976) argues for an inner-Greek innovation of the -eus inflection type from Indo-European material rather than a "Mediterranean" loan.

Greek: The noun Greek refers to:...

English: English in common usage may refer to:...

Byzantine: The word Byzantine refers to:...