Welcome back to you, etymology enthusiasts! Here we are for another episode of An Assemblage of Grandiose and Bombastic Grandiloquents. We’re hoping today’s word has no place as an adjective in your life right now, for today’s word is: Sisyphean. 

Sisyphean is a term meaning, laborious, endless and futile. As in, ‘man, digging this hole to China in my backyard sure is Sisyphean!’ This word has a rather detailed origin; it comes from Greek mythology’s legendary King Sisyphus, who was condemned for his craftiness and deceit and therefore punished with the task of perpetually rolling a huge stone to the top of the hill, only to have it roll back each time he neared his goal. Sounds fun, right?

Sisyphus was the King of Ephyra, or as it would later be known, Corinth. His name actually means ‘crafty’ in Greek, and was rather apt, as Sisyphus was a sly ruler, who cheated Death, or in Greek, ‘Thanatos’, in his own chains the first time he was sentenced to death. Later, after Sisyphus’ eventual passing, Zeus bestowed the cruel and endless punishment upon him for his cunning wit, and the belief that Sisyphus was more clever than Zeus himself. Zeus enchanted the boulder so that it would roll away each time Sisyphus neared the top, thus entrapping him in an eternity of effortful labour and frustration. 

And so, we are left with the wonderful adjective ‘Sisphyean’, sometimes capitalised, to describe any venture that is both laborious and futile. The word found its way into the English language in the late 16th/early 17th century, but surprisingly, has grown steadily in popularity since the 1950s, perhaps indicating the number of Sisyphean tasks that occur in our modern world? I suppose it's not for me to say.

Comparable characters with similar Sisyphean tasks include Naranath Bhranthan, an Indian folklore character who was considered to be a divine person, but mad, and whose activity consisted of rolling a big stone up a hill and then letting it fall back down, and Wu Gang, who is known for endlessly cutting down a self-healing osmanthus tree on the moon. Poor Sisphyean fools.

Isn’t language wonderful?

Written by Taylor Davidson, Read by Zane C Weber

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