Greek to

(it's all) Greek to (one)

(It is) completely unintelligible, as if it is written in a language that one does not speak. The phrase comes from Shakespeare's play Julius Caesar. Mom said these instructions are Greek to her and that we should show them to Dad. A: "Can you understand this error message?" B: "Sorry, Greek to me. You'd better ask one of the programmers."
See also: Greek

Greek to (someone)

incomprehensible to someone; as mysterious as Greek writing. I don't understand this. It's all Greek to me. She said it was Greek to her, and that it made no sense at all.
See also: Greek
References in periodicals archive ?
Matthew's Gospel; features text, vocabulary, and notes on each page; includes a Greek to English glossary; provides an introduction to the Greek alphabet, pronunciation, tenses, and moods; and is enhanced with a grammatical appendix.
Reading the Gospel of St. Matthew in Greek: A Beginning
The dictionary takes the form of both Greek to English and English to Greek.
Pocket Oxford Classical Greek Dictionary
As the title states, this work deals with the philosophy of translation and its practice applied to translations of the Pseudo-Anacreon by Henri Estienne, Elie Andre (Greek to Latin), and Pierre Ronsard and Remy Belleau (Neo-Latin to French).
Anacreon Redivivus: A Study of Anacreontic Translation in Mid-Sixteenth Century France
Patterson sees and must see a permanent and perpetual obsessive attention and consequent tension; I think that the most apparent and consistent attitude of the free Greek to the slave was to ignore him him, not to be conscious of him.
Freedom, vol. 1, Freedom in the Making of Western Culture
Idioms browser ?
Full browser ?