Director Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey, a film adaptation of Homer’s Greek epic, has garnered more than a billion dollars at the box office and reacquainted audiences with the power of classical mythology.

Of all the literary sources that adorn our English language, classical Greco-Roman mythology is one of the richest. We constantly speak and hear and write and read the names of the ancient gods and goddesses and heroes and heroines, even if we don’t always know it.

The most famous of the epic poet Homer’s creations spent 10 years after the fall of Troy wandering through the ancient world encountering sorceresses and cyclopes (one-eyed monsters with 20/ vision). The wily hero’s name, Odysseus, lives on in the word odyssey, which we use to describe a long journey or voyage marked by bizarre turns of events. Odysseus, king of Ithica, was tempted by mermaids who perched on rocks in the sea and lured ancient mariners to their deaths. Their piercing call has given us our word siren for the rising and falling whistle emitted by ambulances, fire engines, and police cars.

Another great Greek hero, Hercules, needed all his power to complete 12 exceedingly laborious labors. We use the adjective herculean to describe a mighty effort or an extraordinarily difficult task.

A tribe of fierce female warriors cut off their right breasts so that they could draw their bows more efficiently. The name of their tribe, Amazons, originally meant “breastless.” It now  means “a powerful woman” and is also the name of the mighty river Amazonas and the brand of the gargantuan e-commerce company.

Echo is an echo of a story that is more than two millennia old. Echo was a beautiful nymph who once upon a time aided Zeus, the king of the gods, in a love affair by keeping Hera, his wife, occupied in conversation. As a punishment for such verbal meddling, Hera confiscated Echo’s power to initiate conversation and allowed her to repeat only the last words of anything she heard. Such was a sorry enough fate, but later Echo fell madly in love with an exceedingly handsome Greek boy, Narcissus, who, because of Echo’s peculiar handicap, would have nothing to do with her.

The fate that befell Narcissus explains why his name has been transformed into the words narcissist, narcissism, and narcissistic, pertaining to extreme self-love. One day Narcissus looked into a still forest lake and beheld his own face in the water. He at once fell in love with the beautiful face just beneath the surface, and he, like Echo, pined away for a love that could never be consummated. In one version of the story, Narcissus leaned over to kiss his reflection and fell into the watery image and drowned.

One of the vilest of mythology’s villains was King Tantalus, who served the body of his young son as a dish for the gods. They soon discovered the king’s wicked ruse, restored the dead boy to life, and devised a punishment to fit the crime. They banished the king to Hades, where he is condemned to stand in a sparkling pool of water with boughs of luscious fruit overhead. When he stoops to drink, the water drains away through the bottom of the pool, and when he wishes to eat, the branches of fruit sway just out of his grasp. Ever since, when something presents itself temptingly to our view, we invoke this king’s name, tantalize and tantalizing.

The adjective jovial, “merry, inspiring mirth,” comes from the name the ancient Romans gave to the king of their gods, Jove, because it was a happy omen to be born under his influence.

We call a collection of maps an atlas, named after the Titan who held up the sky.

The frenetic Greek nature god Pan was said to cause sudden fear by darting out from behind bushes and frightening passers-by. That fright now bears his name, panic.

The goddess of love and beauty bequeaths us many words from both her Greek and Roman names, Aphrodite and Venus: aphrodisiac, hermaphrodite, venereal, venerate.

Stentor, a Greek herald in Homer’s Iliad, was a human public address system whose voice could be heard all over camp. Today, the adjective stentorian means “loud-voiced, bellowing.”

Because of its fluidity and mobility, quicksilver is identified by a more common label that is the Roman name for Hermes, the winged messenger of the gods. That name, mercury, has also bequeathed us mercurial, an adjective meaning “swift, eloquent, volatile.”