Oikos

Oikos is a Greek term that translates to “house,” “household,” or “home.” In classical usage it referred to the domestic sphere—the dwelling, the family, and its property, including enslaved persons and dependents. The word appears in compounds that shaped social and economic thought, most notably oikonomia, the art or science of household management.

In ancient Greece, the oikos functioned as the basic unit of economy and society. The head of the household, the oikonomos, supervised land, slaves, goods, and household labor, and the strength and stability of the oikos affected political alliances and inheritance. The concept often extended beyond the nuclear family to include kin and property, forming a single, legally recognized economic unit.

Philosophers and early economists used the oikos to analyze resource allocation and wealth. Aristotle described the oikos as the primary economic unit, organizing production, consumption, and reproduction within its framework. The term oikonomia came to denote the management of a household and, more broadly, the science of managing resources, giving rise to the modern word economy.

Today, oikos survives in modern Greek as the everyday word for “home.” In biblical and Koine Greek, oikos frequently means “household” or “house” in familial or communal contexts. The term also contributed to the formation of “ecology” through the root oik- and the suffix -logia, reflecting the study of the interrelations within the environments of a home or habitat.