βίος

Pronunciation

• IPA (5th-century BC Attic): /bí.os/^[1]
• IPA (4th-century AD Koine): /ˈβi.os/^[1]
• IPA (10th-century Byzantine): /ˈvi.os/^[1]

Forms

βῐ́ος (bíos) m (genitive βῐ́ου); second declension^[1]

Etymology

It is inherited from Proto-Indo-European *gʷeyh₃- (“to live”), the Indo-European root for “live”.^[1][2][3] The exact formation is disputed.^[1][2][3] Wiktionary gives either Proto-Hellenic *gʷīwos, from *gʷih₃wós (“alive”), or a shortened form of βίοτος (bíotos);^[1] the NIL sets up a thematic noun *gʷih₃-o-, with a question mark;^[2] Frisk treats it as an old two-syllable root noun of the same type as βίοτος (bíotos) and βιοτή (biotḗ), from the root of the aorist ἐβίων (ebíōn, “I lived”).^[3] Within Greek it belongs with ζάω (zā́ō, “to live”), ζωός (zōós, “alive”) and ὑγιής (hugiḗs, “healthy”).^[3][4]

Cognate with Sanskrit जीवति (jīvati, “lives”), Latin vīvō (“to live”), vīvus (“alive”), Old Church Slavonic жити (žiti, “to live”) and Old Armenian կեամ (keam, “I live”).^[1][5]

Ancient writers explained it otherwise: a saying attributed to Menander derives it from βία (bíā, “force”), because life is earned by strength, and the Etymologicum Genuinum adds a derivation from a verb “to go”, life being a journey.^[4]

Earliest recorded meaning

Homer has it only three times, all in the Odyssey, for a person's course or manner of life: “you live a good life” (Odyssey 15.491).^[6][7] For the means of living Homer uses βίοτος (bíotos); βίος in that sense first appears in Hesiod's Works and Days, of the year's store of grain.^[8][9]

Semantic evolution

Classical Greek kept βίος for life as it is lived (its length, its circumstances, its kind) and left bare physical existence to ζωή (zōḗ): the grammarian Ammonius says βίος is said only of rational beings, and quotes Aristotle's definition of it as “rational life”.^[10][8] The distinction is not strict, since Xenophon and Aristotle speak of the βίος of spiders and plants,^[8][11] and the tragic poets use it for life itself, as in “breathing out one's βίος”.^[8]

From Hesiod on it also means livelihood, property: Herodotus and Thucydides speak of making one's living from something.^[8][9] Plutarch's Lives gave it the sense of a written life, a biography,^[11][8] and later writers such as Sextus Empiricus use it for the world and ordinary people, as opposed to philosophers.^[8][9] In the New Testament it means the present life with its affairs and, in Mark and Luke, a person's whole means of subsistence.^[12][13]

Medieval Greek used it both for human life and for possessions and wealth.^[14] In Modern Greek βίος “life” is a learned word, while the popular neuter βιος “property, wealth” continues the medieval neuter.^[15] The usual Modern Greek word for life is Modern Greek ζωή (zoí).^[4] English bio- comes from it.^[1][16]

Timeline

• Homer – The Odyssey uses it three times for a person's way of life.^[6][7]
• Before the 6th century BC – Hesiod uses it for livelihood, the store of food.^[8][9]
• 5th century BC – Herodotus uses it for a lifetime and for a living.^[8][9]
• 4th century BC – Aristotle defines it as rational life, as Ammonius reports.^[10][9]
• 1st–2nd century AD – Plutarch uses it for a biography.^[11][9]
• 1st century AD – The New Testament uses it for the present life and for a person's means of living.^[12]
• Medieval – Vernacular Greek uses it for life and for wealth.^[14]

Meanings

Noun

1. Life as lived: the course or manner of a person's life, a way of life.^[8][11]
2. A lifetime, the length of a life.^[8][11]
3. Livelihood, means of living; property, wealth.^[8][11][9]
4. (poetic) Life itself, the life breathed out at death.^[8][11]
5. A written life, a biography.^[8][11]
6. (late) The world; people at large, as opposed to philosophers.^[8][9]

Related words

• Latin vīvus
• English bio-

Usage notes

The near-homograph βιός (biós), with the accent on the last syllable, is the Homeric word for a bow;^[8][9] Heraclitus played on the two: “the bow's name is life, its work death”.^[8][9] The proverbial “life under Cronus” was the Golden Age.^[8]

References

1. ^ a b c d e f g h i Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c Wodtko, Dagmar S.; Irslinger, Britta; Schneider, Carolin (2008), Nomina im indogermanischen Lexikon, Heidelberg: Winter
3. ^ a b c d Frisk, Hjalmar (1960–1972), Griechisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3 vols, Heidelberg: Carl Winter
4. ^ a b c Etygram: ancient etymologies of Greek words, CEPAM, Université Côte d'Azur, http://appsweb-cepam.unice.fr/etygram
5. ^ Pokorny, Julius (1959), Indogermanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, Bern; Munich: Francke
6. ^ a b Pape, Wilhelm (1914), Griechisch-deutsches Handwörterbuch, 3rd ed., rev. Max Sengebusch, Braunschweig: Vieweg
7. ^ a b Cunliffe, Richard John (1924), A Lexicon of the Homeric Dialect, London: Blackie and Son
8. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r Liddell, Henry George; Scott, Robert; Jones, Henry Stuart (1940), A Greek-English Lexicon, 9th ed., Oxford: Clarendon Press
9. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k Rodríguez Adrados, Francisco, et al., eds. (1980–), Diccionario Griego-Español, Madrid: CSIC, http://dge.cchs.csic.es/xdge
10. ^ a b [Ammonius], De adfinium vocabulorum differentia, ed. K. Nickau (Leipzig: Teubner, 1966)
11. ^ a b c d e f g h Diggle, James, et al., eds. (2021), The Cambridge Greek Lexicon, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press
12. ^ a b Bauer, Walter; Danker, Frederick W., et al. (2000), A Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament and Other Early Christian Literature, 3rd ed., Chicago: University of Chicago Press
13. ^ Thayer, Joseph Henry (1889), A Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament, New York: American Book Company
14. ^ a b Kriaras, Emmanuel, Επιτομή του Λεξικού της μεσαιωνικής ελληνικής δημώδους γραμματείας 1100–1669, Κέντρο Ελληνικής Γλώσσας, https://www.greek-language.gr
15. ^ Ινστιτούτο Νεοελληνικών Σπουδών (Ίδρυμα Μανόλη Τριανταφυλλίδη) (1998), Λεξικό της κοινής νεοελληνικής, Thessaloniki: Aristotle University of Thessaloniki
16. ^ Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com