What was the eltzis, the bekilis, and the kaïmakamis? What was the difference between the armatolos and the klephtis? Who were the Kaklamanoi, the Talarisioi, and the Chaldoupides? Who was superior: the aga, the pasha, or the bey? Was the briki stronger, the corvette or the frigate? What position did the subasi, the tasiltaris, and the zampitis have in the Ottoman system? What significance did the words loufes, preza, and tertipi have in the Greek of the time?
As we approach the celebration of 200 years since the founding event of the modern Greek state, the texts of the time will come to the fore. However, all these texts, whether written by illiterate or highly educated individuals, whether handwritten or with the intervention of grammarians, contain words unknown to today's reader or terms that today have acquired a different meaning or are used in a different context.
Having deciphered dozens of writings from the time, from memoirs and private correspondence to parliamentary decisions and references to the authorities, without forgetting the folk songs, Nikos Sarantakos, a passionate word hunter, has gathered 300 representative terms: words of Ottoman administration, terminology of the irregular and regular army, vocabulary of ships and seamanship, Ottoman and European currencies, even the first characterizations of the opposing sides in the civil conflicts.
Over a thousand quotations, from the Doric simplicity of Makrygiannis to the elegant creations of the Phanariots, convey to today's reader the spirit of the era and the style and character of its people, from the great and heroic achievements to the everyday or even the comical, thus tracing the 1821 Revolution through its words.