Fossilized Dative Expressions

The dative is gone from Modern Greek as a case, but not from the vocabulary. Dozens of ancient dative forms survive embedded whole inside fixed phrases — the way English keeps whom, whence and the powers that be long after the grammar that produced them stopped working. This page is the field guide to those fossils: how to recognise one, what it means, which register it belongs to, and the single rule that governs all of them.

That rule is worth stating before anything else. A fossilized dative is a vocabulary item, not a grammatical form. You learn it, you do not derive it. The reason is on The lost dative: Modern Greek has no dative paradigm at all, so there is nothing for a new phrase to be built out of.

The four best-known fossils — εντάξει, δόξα τω Θεώ, τοις εκατό and εν πάση περιπτώσει — are introduced on The Greek case system, and the βάσει / ελλείψει / δυνάμει group, which behaves like a set of prepositions, is handled on Genitive after learned prepositions. This page covers everything else.

How to recognise a fossil

Two signals, and together they catch nearly every one.

Signal 1: the trigger word. Four tiny words are themselves datives or dative-governing, and almost every fossil begins with one of them:

• εν — the ancient preposition ἐν ("in"), which governed the dative and died with it
• συν — the ancient σύν ("with"), likewise
• τω — the masculine/neuter dative singular article
• τοις — the masculine/neuter dative plural article

Signal 2: the ending. Modern Greek nouns simply do not end in these shapes.

If you see a word ending in -ει or -ω where you expected a noun in -η or -ο, and there is an εν in front of it, you are looking at a fossil. Stop analysing and look it up as a phrase.

The five worth learning first

εν ολίγοις — "in short"

Literally "in few (words)". (formal / written), and used semi-jokingly in speech by educated speakers. The everyday equivalent is με λίγα λόγια.

εν μέρει — "partly, in part"

From μέρος ("part"), third declension, dative μέρει. This one is close to register-neutral: it belongs to careful speech as much as to writing, and there is no shorter way to say it.

εν γνώσει — "knowingly" (and its opposite εν αγνοία)

Εν γνώσει (μου / σου / του) means "in the knowledge of", "knowingly"; εν αγνοία μου is its mirror image, "without my knowledge". Both are (formal / legal / journalistic) and both take a genitive complement or a possessive clitic.

τω όντι — "indeed, in fact"

The dative of the ancient participle ὄν ("being"). (formal / literary); in ordinary speech it sounds bookish or deliberately arch. Its living descendant is the everyday adverb όντως, from the same root — a perfect example of a fossil and a working word sitting side by side in the modern vocabulary.

εν προκειμένω — "in the present case"

Literally "in the matter lying before us". (legal / academic), and one of the most useful signposts in formal Greek prose. Everyday equivalent: σε αυτή την περίπτωση, or simply εδώ.

The εν + noun family, and its living twin

A large sub-family of fossils has the shape εν + noun in the dative, describing a state or condition. What makes this group genuinely interesting is that most of them have a modern doublet built with σε + accusative, meaning the same thing in a lower register. The two forms are two thousand years apart and both are current.

A second group of εν-phrases works as discourse connectors and adverbs rather than as state descriptions:

The τοις and συν fossils

A note on spelling

Modern orthography is inconsistent here, because the fusion of these phrases into single words happened at different times and dictionaries simply record the result. Some are written solid: εντάξει, εντούτοις, ενόψει. Others stay separate: εν μέρει, εν γνώσει, εν λόγω, εν τέλει, τω όντι. There is no rule to learn — check the phrase, not the pattern.

Εντάξει is the extreme case. It began as ἐν τάξει ("in order"), and it is now so completely absorbed that Greek speakers do not perceive a dative in it at all. That is what total fossilisation looks like: the phrase outlives not only its grammar but the awareness that it ever had any.

Never build a new one

The εν-family looks productive. It is not. There is no rule generating these phrases — you are seeing a closed inherited list, and a large list can pass for a pattern.

The evidence that even native speakers treat these as opaque lumps is in the spelling errors they make: εν λόγο for εν λόγω, εν γνώση for εν γνώσει. Those are exactly the mistakes you get when a speaker reanalyses a fossil using the modern endings they actually possess — which is also, precisely, the mistake a learner makes.

Register: when to use them

Most of these belong to writing: news copy, legal documents, academic prose, official letters. Dropping εν προκειμένω into a conversation about dinner will read as either pretentious or, if your timing is good, funny — and Greeks do use them jokily for exactly that effect.

A few have crossed over and are register-neutral in ordinary careful speech: εν μέρει, εν τέλει, εν πάση περιπτώσει, συν τοις άλλοις, and of course εντάξει, which nobody experiences as formal at all. Learn the whole set for reading; produce only these.

Common Mistakes

1. Rewriting the dative ending with a modern one. -ω here is not the neuter -ο.

2. Substituting the modern nominative inside the phrase. Γνώση is the living word; the fossil keeps γνώσει.

3. Using the modern noun shape after εν. Μέρος → μέρει; the phrase is frozen in the ancient form.

4. Coining a new εν-phrase by analogy. The pattern is closed.

5. Reaching for the fossil where the everyday phrase belongs. Both are correct; only one fits a conversation.

Key Takeaways

• Fossilized datives are vocabulary, not grammar. Modern Greek has no dative paradigm, so nothing here can be derived or extended.
• Spot them by the trigger words εν, συν, τω, τοις and by the endings -ω, -ει, -η/-α, -οις, -σι, which no living Modern Greek noun uses.
• The core set for reading: εν ολίγοις (in short), εν μέρει (partly), εν γνώσει / εν αγνοία (knowingly / unbeknownst), τω όντι (indeed), εν προκειμένω (in the present case).
• Many εν-phrases have a living doublet with σε: εν εξελίξει / σε εξέλιξη, εν ισχύι / σε ισχύ, εν λειτουργία / σε λειτουργία. The fossil is the higher register; the meaning is the same.
• εν λόγω behaves as an indeclinable adjective between article and noun: ο εν λόγω υπάλληλος.
• Spelling is idiosyncratic — εντάξει and εντούτοις are solid, εν μέρει and εν λόγω are separate. Check each phrase individually.
• Produce only the crossed-over ones (εν μέρει, εν τέλει, εν πάση περιπτώσει, συν τοις άλλοις, εντάξει); recognise the rest. And never coin a new dative — for "in", the answer is always σε.