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First recorded in 1840–50; from Spanish: literally, “foreign language, foreigner, especially an English-speaking one who speaks Spanish poorly”; often pejorative; probably alteration of griego “Greek, incomprehensible language”; compare English “It's Greek to me,” first recorded in English in Shakespeare's Julius Caesar (1599). The English and Spanish come from the Latin Graecum est; non legitur, “It's Greek; it isn't read” (either because the Greek was incomprehensible or because it was possibly heretical), supposedly dating from medieval monastic scriptoria. The belief that this word is from the song “Green Grow the Lilacs,” popular during the U.S.-Mexican War, is without substance. Greek