it's all Greek to me

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it's all Greek to me

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• it's Greek to me, that's Greek to me, that's all Greek to me

First quoted as “it was Greek to me” in Julius Caesar by Shakespeare, maybe translated from a Medieval Latin sentence.

• IPA^(key): /ɪts ˌɔːl ˈɡɹiːk tə ˌmiː/

• Audio (US):

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it's all Greek to me

1. (idiomatic) I don't understand any of it; it makes no sense.

   Synonyms: it's all Chinese to me, (I can’t) make head or tail of (it), double Dutch

   I tried reading the instructions, but it’s all Greek to me.

   • 1599 (first performance), William Shakespeare, “The Tragedie of Iulius Cæsar”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies  (First Folio), London: Isaac Iaggard, and Ed Blount, published 1623, →OCLC, , page 112, column 1:

     But thoſe that vnderſtood him, ſmil'd at one another, and ſhooke their heads: but for mine owne part, it was Greeke to me.

   • , translated by , The Works of Francis Rabelais, Doctor in Physick: Containing Five Books of the Lives, Heroick Deeds, and Sayings of Gargantua, and His Sonne Pantagruel.  Epistle all done by Mr. Francis Rabelais in the French Tongue and Now Faithfully Translated into English">…], London: ">…] for Richard Baddeley, , →OCLC; republished in volume II, London: Navarre Society , , →OCLC, 5th book:

     During the processions they trilled and quavered most melodiously betwixt their teeth I do not know what antiphones, or chantings, by turns. For my part, ’twas all Hebrew-Greek to me, the devil a word I could pick out on’t;]

   • 1844, Marryat, chapter XI, in The Settlers in Canada. , volume II, London: Longman, Brown, Green, & Longmans, , →OCLC, pages 181–182:

     "Well," said Alfred, "it may be a letter, but I confess it is all Greek to me. I certainly do not see why you wish to keep it a secret. Tell me."

   • 1849, Herman Melville, “He is Initiated in the Business of Cleaning Out the Pig-pen, and Slushing Down the Top-mast”, in Redburn: His First Voyage. , 1st American edition, New York, N.Y.: Harper & Brothers, , →OCLC, page 45:

     I ran after him, and received an order to go aloft and “slush down the main-top mast.” This was all Greek to me, and after receiving the order, I stood staring about me, wondering what it was that was to be done.

   • 1904, George M. Fenn, The Ocean Cat's Paw:

     “Look here, Mr. Count,” he said; “I am only a rough Englishman, and a lot of what you have been saying about mission and that sort of thing is just so much Greek to me.”

   • 1907, H G Wells, The War in the Air: , London: George Bell and Sons, published 1908, →OCLC:

     “It's more like some firm's paper. All this printed stuff at the top. Drachenflieger. Drachenballons. Ballonstoffe. Kugelballons. Greek to me.”

   • 1929, M K Gandhi, chapter VIII, in Mahadev Haribhai Desai and Pyarelal Nair, transl., The Story of My Experiments with Truth: Translated from the Original in Gujarati, volume II, Ahmedabad, Gujarat: Navajivan Press, →OCLC:

     A Parsi lawyer was examining a witness and asking him question regarding credit and debit entries in account books. It was all Greek to me.

   • 1965, Harry Ray Bannister, The Education of a Broadcaster, page 16:

     Cavanaugh explained the network-affiliate relationship, which of course was all Greek to me and remained so even after his explanation.

   • 2004, Jacob Taubes, The Political Theology of Paul, page 99:

     it was expected of me, or it was considered an honor, to lecture on seventeenth-century philosophy: Descartes (which was all Greek to me), Descartes to Spinoza.

• Mark Liberman (2009 January 15) “The directed graph of stereotypical incomprehensibility”, in Language Log‎