gammadion means A fylfot or swastika. Lexicurio rates it Sui generis — a strength score of 87 out of 100.
Why “gammadion” is a great word
A decorative symbol formed of four capital Greek gammas joined at their bases, creating a cross with arms bent at right angles. Its name is a learned borrowing from Byzantine Greek γαμμάδιον (gammádion), a diminutive of γάμμα (gámma, "the Greek letter Γ"), from the resemblance of each arm of the symbol to that letter. Unlike "swastika," a term now freighted with the indelible horrors of the twentieth century, or "fylfot," a chiefly English heraldic label, "gammadion" is the precise, dispassionate word of the art historian and the archaeologist, pointing to form over fraught meaning. It is the pattern pressed into cooling clay on a Mycenaean pot, the repeating motif chiseled along a Byzantine saint's marble hem, and the quiet geometry tessellating a Roman mosaic floor—a shape emptied of modern sin, an ancient wheel spun by the human hand long before it was ever bent into a broken cross.
Etymology
Learned borrowing from Byzantine Greek γαμμάδιον (gammádion), diminutive of γάμμα (gámma), after the resemblance of each of the symbol’s arms to the Greek letter gamma: Γ.
noun
- A fylfot or swastika.