Winged Word

Winged words are words which, first uttered or written in a specific literary context, have since passed into common usage to express a general idea—sometimes to the extent that those using them are unaware of their origin as quotations. The reference is to words, which having "taken wing" in this way, then fly from one person to another.

The expression—deriving from the Homeric phrase ἔπεα πτερόεντα (epea pteroenta) and now itself an example of "winged words"—was first employed systematically in this sense by the German philologist Georg Büchmann in his book Geflügelte Worte (1864). It was later taken up by Thomas Carlyle in an essay about Walter Scott.