Etymologically
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βαλιός

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Pronunciation

  • 5th-century BC Attic: /ba.li.ós/[1]
  • 4th-century AD Koine: /βa.liˈos/[1]
  • 10th-century Byzantine: /va.liˈos/[1]

Forms

βᾰλῐός (baliós) m (feminine βᾰλῐᾱ́, neuter βᾰλῐόν); first/second declension[1] With a different accent, Βαλίος is the name of one of Achilles' horses in the Iliad.[2][3]

Etymology

The origin is uncertain.[2][4] The ending matches other colour adjectives in -ι(ϝ)ός such as πολιός (poliós, “grey”).[2][4] Because /b/ is very rare in Indo-European, many have taken it as a loan from a neighbouring Indo-European language: Thracian or Phrygian (Solmsen), Illyrian (Grošelj), Macedonian (Schwyzer, hesitantly); the native Greek counterpart would then be φαλιός (phaliós, “with a white spot”), and Pokorny posits Proto-Indo-European *bʰel- (“shining, white”).[2][4][1][5] Athanassakis argued at length for an Illyrian origin, comparing Albanian ballë (“horse with a white spot on the forehead”).[2] The DGE thinks it perhaps eastern and related to φαλιός.[6] A link with βάλλω (bállō, “to throw”) is hard to justify in meaning, Frisk says.[4]

Earliest recorded meaning

The Iliad names one of Achilles' horses Βαλίος, “Dapple” or “Piebald”; the adjective itself is first found in Euripides' lyrics, of dappled deer and lynxes.[3][7][8][9]

Semantic evolution

Euripides uses it for the dappled coats of deer, lynxes, a calf and horses, and a Hellenistic epigram of Simmias for a speckled partridge.[6][3] Callimachus applied it to the wings of the west wind, where it seems to mean “swift”, and later epic poets (Oppian, Triphiodorus, Nonnus) use it in that sense, probably after the model of ἀργός (argós).[7][2][4][6] Hesychius has βαλία (balía), glossed as an eye disease, which may be derived from it.[2][4]

Timeline

  • Homer – The Iliad names Achilles' horse Βαλίος.[3][8]
  • 5th century BC – Euripides uses βαλιός of dappled deer and lynxes.[3][6][9]
  • 4th–3rd century BC – Callimachus uses it, apparently meaning “swift”, of the wings of Zephyr,[7] and Simmias of a partridge.[7][6]
  • 2nd century AD – Oppian uses it for swift beasts.[3][6]
  • 4th–5th century AD – Nonnus uses it of swift winds.[3][6]

Meanings

Adjective

  1. Spotted, dappled, mottled (of animals' coats).[3][7][6]
  2. (late poetry) swift.[3][7][6]

Word family

  • Βαλίος (Balíos)
  • βαλία (balía)
  • φαλιός (phaliós)
  • Albanian ballë

References

  1. ^ a b c d e Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
  2. ^ a b c d e f g Beekes, Robert S. P. (2010), Etymological Dictionary of Greek, with the assistance of Lucien van Beek, Leiden Indo-European Etymological Dictionary Series 10, Leiden; Boston: Brill
  3. ^ a b c d e f g h i Liddell, Henry George; Scott, Robert; Jones, Henry Stuart (1940), A Greek-English Lexicon, 9th ed., Oxford: Clarendon Press
  4. ^ a b c d e f Frisk, Hjalmar (1960–1972), Griechisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3 vols, Heidelberg: Carl Winter
  5. ^ Pokorny, Julius (1959), Indogermanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, Bern; Munich: Francke
  6. ^ a b c d e f g h i Rodríguez Adrados, Francisco, et al., eds. (1980–), Diccionario Griego-Español, Madrid: CSIC, http://dge.cchs.csic.es/xdge
  7. ^ a b c d e f Diggle, James, et al., eds. (2021), The Cambridge Greek Lexicon, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press
  8. ^ a b Scarborough, Matthew (2025), PHILOGLOSSA: database of Pre-Greek and other non-Indo-European words in Ancient Greek, version 1.0
  9. ^ a b Keersmaekers, Alek (2021–2025), GLAUx: The Greek Language Automated corpus, https://github.com/alekkeersmaekers/glaux