An opinion piece calls a party’s dubious promises a “siren song.” An article labels the women who waited for their husbands to return from the front during World War II as “Penelopes.” A user describes their housing search as “an odyssey.” None of them consciously cite Homer, yet all (we speak, more accurately) speak with a vocabulary born from his work. The Odyssey has managed to reshape the artistic, expressive, and cultural face of the Mediterranean and beyond for centuries, even in the digital age. And it has done so through language.
Life is an Odyssey: why we use Homeric vocabulary in everyday life.
The Homeric Toolkit: Five Words We Still Use
From computer Trojan horses to seductive Circes, the Homeric language of the Iliad and the Odyssey remains very much alive in everyday speech. Some terms are fully lexicalized, meaning they are embedded in the language as common words. Others are used to craft analogies and metaphors in journalism, in literature, or simply when we want to develop an idea or an opinion by leaning on a shared cultural image.
Thus, we speak of “odyssey“, a term defined by the Diccionario de la lengua española (DLE) as a “long journey, in which adventures adverses and favorable to the traveler abound” and as “a succession of mishaps, usually unpleasant.” Its etymology explicitly traces back to the Homeric poem, and it is the most complete case of metaphor: many speakers use it without thinking of Odysseus’s efforts to return home.
Another term that has reached full naturalization is mentor. The DLE defines it as “counselor or guide” and clarifies that it comes from Mentor, a character in The Odyssey and adviser to Telemachus. Today it is used with complete normality in education, the business world, and technology.
Remember the image of Odysseus, bound to the mast of his ship with ears filled with beeswax, resisting the treacherous voices of the sirens? From that unforgettable scene comes the expression “siren song“: an attractive and hypnotic promise that can derail one’s aim or endanger the listener.
Ithaca is another term fairly common in headlines, news, and opinion pieces. The island from which Odysseus was king and to which he seeks to return during the Odyssey has become synonymous with destination, the goal of the return. It alludes to the need to return to the starting point, if possible, as a hero who has learned from his journey.
And what about Penelope, the hero’s wife who waits for his return? Penelope has become a byword for stoic patience, but also for cunning and a restrained wisdom capable of safeguarding honor while the king and head of the family embarks on a thousand escapades.
Some terms are fully lexicalized, that is, integrated into the language as ordinary words. Others are used to craft analogies and metaphors.
Three Micro-Cases: Spaces in Which Homeric Imagination Lives
Although Homeric expressions are used in every imaginable context, there are three that stand out. In politics, one of the dominant images concerns the sirens and their deceptive song. The image is used to describe seductive forces that are hard to resist and deceitful promises whose only aim is to destroy the listener.
Another area where the Homeric terms gain ground is sports. People speak, for example, of an “odyssey” to refer to a long and eventful season, or of returning to “Ithaca” to designate the return of a team or an elite athlete to the homeland. Expressions like “the odyssey of a promotion” and “the long journey back” work because most fans have internalized the structure of the expression, which indicates a trial overcome after many episodes.
In technology and marketing, there are communications agencies named Ulysses or Ithaca and technological environments that recycle these names. They are brands that, for the most part, aspire to associate themselves with notions of travel, ingenuity, or destiny.
In politics, the siren song describes seductive forces hard to resist and deceitful promises that only aim to destroy the listener.
The “Homerometer”: how to tell if your reference is gold
To separate cultured nods from clichés and misattributions, we can evaluate each expression using four variables. The first is specificity: does the reference point to a specific episode or character from the Odyssey or does it merely evoke something ancient and epic in a generic way? The second concerns Narrative Function. Thus, we can ask whether that term or expression adds semantic value (test, costly temptation, return, etc.) to what we are saying or if it is mere decoration.
It is also essential to evaluate accuracy: does the sense I give to the expression align with the poem’s meaning or does it distort it? And finally, one must not overlook originality: is it a fresh usage or merely a worn-out formula from automatic repetition?
Why Homer and the Odyssey Still Work
If a poem attributed with nearly three millennia of age continues to lend vocabulary to headlines, memes, and advertising campaigns, it’s because it reflects motives and concepts that are almost universal: the return home, hidden identity, the episodic test as a learning process, or the dangerous temptation. That is, to a large extent, the bridge that explains why Odysseus keeps returning to our everyday conversations.
