In the Iliad, Pandaros, son of Lykaon, is a Lykian archer who is allied with the Trojans. In Book 4 of the epic, the goddess Athena tricks him into firing an arrow at the Akhaian king Menelaos, which breaks a truce between the Trojans and Akhaians and causes fighting to resume. Pandaros briefly shows up again in Book 5 when the Akhaian warrior Diomedes knocks him from his chariot, and he quietly disappears from the epic after that. He’s a fairly minor character, and most people have never heard of him. Even if you’ve read the Iliad, there’s a decent chance you don’t remember him.
Many people may, therefore, be surprised to learn that there is a common word in English derived from Pandaros’s name: the verb pander. The fact that Pandaros is the source of this word may be even more surprising to people because the word’s meaning—to appeal to the base desires or prejudices of a particular person or group—has nothing to do with anything Pandaros does in the Iliad or in any other ancient source. The story of how we got from Pandaros the Lykian archer in the Iliad to the English word pander is a very strange one, which involves Geoffrey Chaucer, William Shakespeare, and. . . pimps.
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