Etymologically
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βολβός

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Pronunciation

  • 5th-century BC Attic: /bol.bós/[1]
  • 4th-century AD Koine: /βolˈβos/[1]
  • 10th-century Byzantine: /volˈvos/[1]

Forms

βολβός (bolbós) m (genitive βολβοῦ); second declension[1]

Etymology

It is an expressive, sound-symbolic word with a kind of reduplication and no direct relatives.[2][1][3] It recalls words for round, globular things, such as Latin bulla (“water bubble”) and Lithuanian bur̃bulas (“water bubble”), and is also similar to Old Armenian բողկ (boġk, “radish”).[2][1][3] Beekes thinks Sanskrit बल्बज (balbaja, “a kind of grass”) a less adequate comparison.[2] Babiniotis adds a possible link with Ancient Greek βῶλος (bôlos, “clod”), to which Beekes also refers.[4][2]

Latin bulbus is a loan from it.[2]

Earliest recorded meaning

It is first found in Attic comedy and in Plato in the 5th and 4th centuries BC, for an edible bulb, probably the tassel hyacinth.[5][6][7][4]

Semantic evolution

The edible bulb was a common food in comedy, and Plato mentions it.[6][5] The botanists and doctors then used the word for other bulbous plants: Dioscorides has an “emetic” βολβός for a narcissus and a “wild” one for the meadow saffron, and Theophrastus a “wool-bearing” kind.[6] A scholiast identified it with the truffle.[6]

The word passed into Latin as bulbus, and through French into English as bulb, first “an onion” in the 1560s, then the round underground part of a plant, and by 1800 any similar swelling, such as the bulb of a thermometer or a lamp.[8] Modern Greek has it as the learned word Modern Greek βολβός (volvós).[9]

Timeline

  • 5th–4th century BC – Aristophanes and Plato mention the edible bulb.[6][5][7][3]
  • 4th–3rd century BC – Theophrastus describes several kinds of bulb, and Theocritus mentions it.[6][3]
  • 1st century AD – Dioscorides names other bulbous plants with it.[6][3]
  • 1560s – English takes bulb from French, ultimately from the Greek word.[8]
  • Modern Greek – It survives as the learned word βολβός.[9]

Meanings

Noun

  1. An edible bulb, probably that of the tassel hyacinth.[5][6][2]
  2. Any of several bulbous plants, such as a narcissus or the meadow saffron.[6]

Word family

  • βολβοφακῆ (bolbophakê)
  • βολβώδης (bolbṓdēs)
  • βολβωρυχέω (bolbōrukhéō)

References

  1. ^ a b c d e f Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
  2. ^ a b c d e f 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 Rodríguez Adrados, Francisco, et al., eds. (1980–), Diccionario Griego-Español, Madrid: CSIC, http://dge.cchs.csic.es/xdge
  4. ^ a b Babiniotis, Georgios (2010), Ετυμολογικό λεξικό της νέας ελληνικής γλώσσας [Etymological Dictionary of Modern Greek], Athens: Κέντρο Λεξικολογίας
  5. ^ a b c d Diggle, James, et al., eds. (2021), The Cambridge Greek Lexicon, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press
  6. ^ 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
  7. ^ a b Keersmaekers, Alek (2021–2025), GLAUx: The Greek Language Automated corpus, https://github.com/alekkeersmaekers/glaux
  8. ^ a b Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
  9. ^ a b Ινστιτούτο Νεοελληνικών Σπουδών (Ίδρυμα Μανόλη Τριανταφυλλίδη) (1998), Λεξικό της κοινής νεοελληνικής, Thessaloniki: Aristotle University of Thessaloniki