Etymologically
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γαλέη

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Pronunciation

  • 5th-century BC Attic: /ɡa.lé.ɛː/[1]
  • 4th-century AD Koine: /ɣaˈle.i/[1]
  • 10th-century Byzantine: /ɣaˈle.i/[1]

Forms

γᾰλέη (galéē) f (genitive γᾰλέης); first declension[1] Attic contracted γαλῆ; the uncontracted γαλέη is Ionic and occurs in Theocritus.[2][3]

Etymology

The origin is uncertain.[4][5] The suffix -έη, found in words for animal skins such as ἀλωπεκέη (alōpekéē) “fox-skin”, suggests that the word first named the weasel's pelt and only later the animal.[4][6][5] Since Osthoff it has been compared with Latin glīs (“dormouse”) and Sanskrit गिरि (girí, “mouse”), but the Sanskrit word is known only from lexicons and probably never existed.[4][5][6] Beekes thinks the Latin word could still be related if the Greek goes back to a form with a laryngeal, and Wiktionary reconstructs Proto-Indo-European *gl̥h₁éys (“weasel, mouse”).[4][1] The Welsh word for the weasel is not related.[4][5] The DGE also records a derivation from γαλεός (galeós), the name of a shark.[7]

Frisk and Chantraine take Latin galea (“leather helmet”) to have been borrowed from the original sense “weasel-skin”, as κυνέη (kunéē), literally “dog-skin”, came to mean a helmet.[5][6] According to Hesseling, cited by Frisk, the medieval name of a fast ship, Italian galea, also comes from this word.[5][6]

Earliest recorded meaning

It first appears in the iambic poet Semonides (7th–6th century BC), meaning the weasel or a similar small predator.[2][8][7]

Semantic evolution

The Greek word covered several animals of the weasel family: the weasel, the marten, the polecat and the ferret.[3][2] Chantraine points out that it was the weasel, not the cat, that the Greeks kept in the house to catch mice.[6] Herodotus describes “wild” weasels in Libya and gives the name “Tartessian” to a kind found in the far west.[3] A weasel running across one's path was a bad omen, as Aristophanes and Theophrastus record.[3] Aelian uses the word for a small fish, distinct from the shark called γαλεός (galeós).[3][6]

Dioscorides and later medical writers speak of a “domestic” γαλῆ.[3][8] LSJ renders this as a tame weasel, but Babiniotis takes it as the first sign of the sense “cat”, which the word has in Modern Greek.[3][8]

Timeline

  • 7th–6th century BC – Semonides uses the word for the weasel.[2][7]
  • 5th century BC – Herodotus describes the wild weasels of Libya.[3][7]
  • 5th–4th century BC – Aristophanes treats a weasel crossing one's path as a bad omen.[3][7]
  • 4th century BC – Aristotle discusses the animal in his zoological works.[3][7]
  • 1st century AD – Dioscorides names a “domestic” γαλῆ, which Babiniotis takes for the cat.[3][8][7]
  • 2nd–3rd century AD – Aelian uses it as the name of a small fish.[3][7]

Meanings

Noun

  1. A weasel, marten, polecat or ferret.[3][2]
  2. With “wild”: a ferret of Africa and Spain.[3]
  3. With “domestic”: a tame weasel kept in the house.[3]
  4. A small fish.[3][4]

Word family

  • γαλεάγρα (galeágrā)
  • γαλεός (galeós)
  • γαλεώτης (galeṓtēs)
  • γαλεάγκων (galeánkōn)
  • γαλιάω (galiáō)
  • γαλιδεύς (galideús)
  • μυγαλέη (mūgaléē)

Usage notes

Proverbs used the weasel for bad luck and waste: “you have a weasel” meant “you are unlucky”, and “a saffron dress for a weasel” was said of a fine thing given to someone who cannot value it.[3]

References

  1. ^ a b c d e Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
  2. ^ a b c d e Diggle, James, et al., eds. (2021), The Cambridge Greek Lexicon, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press
  3. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q 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 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
  5. ^ a b c d e f Frisk, Hjalmar (1960–1972), Griechisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3 vols, Heidelberg: Carl Winter
  6. ^ a b c d e f Chantraine, Pierre (2009), Dictionnaire étymologique de la langue grecque: histoire des mots, new ed. with a supplement (Chroniques d'étymologie grecque 1–10), Paris: Klincksieck
  7. ^ a b c d e f g h Rodríguez Adrados, Francisco, et al., eds. (1980–), Diccionario Griego-Español, Madrid: CSIC, http://dge.cchs.csic.es/xdge
  8. ^ a b c d Babiniotis, Georgios (2010), Ετυμολογικό λεξικό της νέας ελληνικής γλώσσας [Etymological Dictionary of Modern Greek], Athens: Κέντρο Λεξικολογίας