How a goat-legged god of the wild, who frightened travellers with a sudden shout, gave us panic. Tap ▶ to hear each step read aloud.
The name Pan probably comes from Proto-Indo-European *peh₂-, to guard, to feed the flock. He was “the herdsman”.
The same root gave pasture, pastor (a shepherd of people), food and feed.
In Greek myth, Pan was the god of shepherds, flocks and wild places. He had the legs and horns of a goat, and he played the pipes made of reeds, still called panpipes.
Pan liked quiet. If travellers woke him in a lonely forest, he gave a terrible shout, and they ran in sudden, senseless fear. The Greeks called this fear panikos, “of Pan”.
A legend said Pan helped the Athenians at the battle of Marathon by filling the enemy with this fear.
The word came into French as panique in the 1500s, and English took it as panic in the 1600s: a sudden fear that spreads through a crowd.
In the 1800s, a panic also meant a sudden fear about money: everyone rushing to the bank at once to take their money out.
Today: a stock-market panic
, panic buying
(everybody buying the same thing at once).
Today we use it all the time.
Examples: Don’t panic!
, a panic attack
, the panic button
, to be in a panic
.
| panpipes | Pan’s pipes of reed |
| panicky | easily frightened |
| pastor, pasture | from the same shepherd root |
French says la panique and paniquer. Careful: pan- meaning “all” (pandemic, panorama) is a different Greek word, though the Greeks themselves sometimes joked that Pan was “the god of everything”.
“Panic is Pan’s shout in the forest.”