Copyright © Philip M. Parker, INSEAD. Terms of Use.

Definition: Byzantium |
ByzantiumNoun1. An ancient city on the Bosporus founded by the Greeks; site of modern Istanbul. Source: WordNet 1.7.1 Copyright © 2001 by Princeton University. All rights reserved. |
Date "Byzantium" was first used in popular English literature: sometime before 1321. (references) |
Crosswords: Byzantium |
| English words defined with "Byzantium": Byzantine, Byzantine Empire ♦ Constantinople ♦ Eastern Roman Empire ♦ Hieromnemon ♦ Istanbul ♦ Stamboul, Stambul. (references) |
| Specialty definitions using "Byzantium": Besants, Byzantine/Rhodian Sea-Law ♦ Historical Geographic Locations ♦ Kingly Titles ♦ Quantas Empire Airways Ltd. (references) |
| Non-English Usage: "Byzantium" is also a word in the following language with the English translation in parentheses. Dutch (Byzantium). |
(From Wikipedia, the free Encyclopedia)
Byzantium was an ancient Greek city, founded by colonists from Megara in 667 BC and named after their king Byzantas. The name "Byzantium" is a Latinization of the original Greek name Byzantion.
After siding with Pescennius Niger against the victorious Septimius Severus the city was besieged and suffered extensive damage in AD 186. Byzantium was rebuilt by the now Roman Emperor Septimius Severus and quickly regained its previous prosperity. The location of Byzantium attracted Constantine the Great who, in AD 330, refounded it as Nova Roma or Constantinoupolis (Constantinople) after a prophetic dream was said to have identified the location of the city.
Of course it did not take a prophet to see that this combination of imperialism and location would play an important role as the crossing point between two continents (Europe and Asia), and later a magnet for Africa and others as well, in terms of commerce, culture, diplomacy and strategy. At a strategic position, Constantinoupolis was able to control the route between Asia and Europe, as well as the passage from the Mediterranean Sea to the Euxinos Pontus (Black Sea).
In 1453 the city fell to the Ottoman Turks, and it has remained a part of Turkey to the present day.
In the 20th century the city was renamed Istanbul.
See also: Roman Empire, Roman Emperors, Constantinople, List of Byzantine Empire-related topics, Byzantine architecture, Byzantine Empire, and Byzantine Emperors.
Source: adapted by the editor from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia under a copyleft GNU Free Documentation License (GFDL) from the article "Byzantium."
| Domain | Usage | |
Movie/TV Titles | Evening in Byzantium (1978) | |
Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits. | ||
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Theater & Movies | |
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Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits. | |
| Subject | Topic | Quote |
Economic History | Cyprus | For 800 years, beginning in AD 364, Cyprus was ruled by Byzantium. (references) |
Bosnia and Herzegovina | After the fall of Rome, Bosnia was contested by Byzantium and Rome's successors in the west. (references) | |
Source: compiled by the editor from ICON Group International, Inc.; see credits. | ||
| "Byzantium" is generally used as a noun (proper) -- approximately 50.00% of the time. "Byzantium" is used about 10 times out of a sample of 100 million words spoken or written in English. Its rank is based on over 700,000 words used in the English language. Some parts-of-speech are not covered due to the samples used by the British National Corpus. (note: percents less than one-hundredth of one percent have been omitted) |
| Parts of Speech | Percent | Usage per 100 Million Words | Rank in English |
| Noun (proper) | 50% | 5 | 157,705 |
| Noun (singular) | 50% | 5 | 157,705 |
| Total | 100.00% | 10 | N/A |
Source: compiled by the editor from several corpora; see credits.
| Hypenated Usage | |
Ending with "Byzantium": Phobos-byzantium. | |
| Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits. | |
| The following statistics estimate the number of searches per day across the major English-language search engines as identified by various trade publications. Hyperlinks lead to commercial use of the expression at Amazon.com. |
| Language | Translations for "Byzantium"; alternative meanings/domain in parentheses. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Afrikaans | Bisantium. (various references) | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Dutch | Byzantium. (various references) | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Esperanto | Bizanco. (various references) | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
French | Byzance. (various references) | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
German | byzanz. (various references) | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Greek | βυζάντιο. (various references) | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Hungarian | bizánc. (various references) | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Irish | An BhiosÚint. (various references) | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Manx | Baisantium. (various references) | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Pig Latin | yzantiumbay Bisâncio. (various references) 'изантия (Lower Empire). (various references) bizancio. (various references) bysans. (various references) bizans. (various references) | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Misspellings | |
"Byzantium" is suggested in spellcheckers for the following: Biozentrum, byzantian. (additional references) | |
| Source: compiled by the editor, based on several corpora (additional references). | |
Scrabble® Enable2K-Verified Anagrams | |
| Words within the letters "a-b-i-m-n-t-u-y-z" | |
-3 letters: byzant, manitu, mutiny, numbat. | |
-4 letters: ambit, amity, aunty, banty, bunya, matin, minty, nizam, nubia, tabun, unity, yamun, zayin. | |
-5 letters: abut, amin, anti, aunt, ayin, bait, bani, bima, bint, bunt, iamb, inby, main, many, maun, maut, mazy, mina, mint, mity, muni, myna, nazi, numb, tabu, tain, tiny, tuba, tuna, tyin, unai, unit, yuan, zany. | |
| Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits. SCRABBLE® is a registered trademark. All intellectual property rights in and to the game are owned in the U.S.A and Canada by Hasbro Inc., and throughout the rest of the world by J.W. Spear & Sons Limited of Maidenhead, Berkshire, England, a subsidiary of Mattel Inc. Mattel and Spear are not affiliated with Hasbro. | |
Hexadecimal (or equivalents, 770AD-1900s) (references)42 79 7A 61 6E 74 69 75 6D |
| Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519; backwards) (references)
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| American Sign Language (origins from 1620-1817 in Italy and, especially, France) (references)
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| Semaphore (1791, in France) (references)
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| Braille (1829, in France) (references)
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Morse Code (1836) (references)-... -.--. --.. .- -. - .. ..- -- |
| Dancing Men (Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, 1903) (references)
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Binary Code (1918-1938, probably earlier) (references)01000010 01111001 01111010 01100001 01101110 01110100 01101001 01110101 01101101 |
HTML Code (1990) (references)B y z a n t i u m |
ISO 10646 (1991-1993) (references)0042 0079 007A 0061 006E 0074 0069 0075 006D |
| British Sign Language (Fingerspelling, BSL; 1992, British Deaf Association Dictionary of British Sign Language) (references)
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Encryption (beginner's substitution cypher): (references)369192678086758779 |
| 1. Definition 2. Crosswords 3. Usage: Modern 4. Usage: Commercial | 5. Images: Slideshow 6. Quotations: Non-fiction 7. Usage Frequency 8. Expressions | 9. Expressions: Internet 10. Translations: Modern 11. Derivations 12. Anagrams | 13. Orthography 14. Bibliography |
Copyright © Philip M. Parker, INSEAD. Terms of Use.