εὐνή

Forms

εὐνή (eunḗ) f (genitive εὐνῆς); first declension^[1] Epic genitive and dative singular and plural εὐνῆφι(ν).^[2][3] Cretan prose εὐνά (euná).^[2]

Etymology

The origin is unknown.^[4][5] Wackernagel derived it from εὕδω (heúdō, “to sleep”), but Chantraine and Babiniotis find two decisive objections: the noun has no rough breathing, and the consonant cluster /dn/ would not have developed this way.^[5][6]

Others compared Old Irish úam (“cave, lair”) and Avestan unā (“hole, slit in the earth”), or Old Armenian ունիմ (unim, “to have, own”), but Beekes and Babiniotis find these comparisons unconvincing.^[4][6][1] Van Beek compares the Indo-Iranian word for “abode, safe place, womb”, Sanskrit योनि (yóni-), and takes Proto-Hellenic *i̯eunā as the earlier form.^[7] According to Wiktionary he separates the sense “anchor-stones”, for which Szemerényi proposed a Semitic word for “stone”.^[1]

Ancient grammarians derived it from the verb for sleeping (Apion) or from νέω (néō, “to pile up”), the bedding being heaped on the bed frame (Orion).^[8]

Earliest recorded meaning

In Homer it is the bedding, as distinguished from the bedstead, and more generally a bed or resting place, the lair of a deer, and the marriage bed.^[3][2][5] In the plural it also names the heavy stones thrown from the prow to hold a ship, which served as anchors (Iliad 1.436).^[2][5][3]

Semantic evolution

Chantraine notes that the word is rather rare in classical prose, where it means a place to lie down, said of soldiers in the field and of animals.^[5][2] Thucydides uses the plural for the bivouacs of troops, Sophocles for a bird's nest, and Xenophon for the form of a hare.^[2][9]

In poetry it was above all the marriage bed, and by extension marriage or sexual union, as in Pindar and the tragedians.^[2][9][5] Aeschylus and Sophocles called the grave the last bed of the dead.^[2][5] Mimnermus used it of the vessel in which Helios crosses the Ocean by night.^[9]

The compound εὐνοῦχος (eunoûkhos), literally “guardian of the bed”, meant a chamberlain and a eunuch.^[4] The word survives in learned Modern Greek as ευνή (evní) “bed”, and in the navy it names a small anchor for mines.^[6][10]

Timeline

• Homer – The Iliad and the Odyssey use it for bedding, a bed, a lair, the marriage bed and anchor-stones.^[3][2]
• 6th century BC – Mimnermus uses it of the vessel in which Helios crosses the Ocean.^[9][11]
• 6th–5th century BC – Pindar uses it for marriage and sexual union, and Aeschylus for the grave.^[2][9][11]
• 5th century BC – Thucydides uses the plural for soldiers' bivouacs, and Sophocles uses the word for a nest.^[2][11]
• 3rd century BC – Apollonius Rhodius names a place in Colchis “the ram's beds”, where the ram of Phrixus rested.^[2][11]
• Modern Greek – It survives as a learned word for a bed and as a naval term for a mine anchor.^[6][10]

Meanings

Noun

1. Bedding, as distinguished from the bedstead.^[2][9][3]
2. A bed, a place for resting or sleeping; in the plural, the sleeping quarters of soldiers in the field, a bivouac.^[2][9]
3. The lair of an animal, the form of a hare, a nest.^[2][9]
4. The marriage bed; by extension, marriage or sexual union.^[2][9][5]
5. (poetic) The grave, one's last bed.^[2][5]
6. (nautical, plural) Stones thrown from the prow and used as anchors.^[2][5][3]

Word family

• εὐνάζω (eunázō)
• εὐνάω (eunáō)
• εὐνοῦχος (eunoûkhos)
• χαμεύνη (khameúnē)

References

1. ^ a b c d e f Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ 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
3. ^ a b c d e f Cunliffe, Richard John (1924), A Lexicon of the Homeric Dialect, London: Blackie and Son
4. ^ a b c 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 g h i j 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
6. ^ a b c d Babiniotis, Georgios (2010), Ετυμολογικό λεξικό της νέας ελληνικής γλώσσας [Etymological Dictionary of Modern Greek], Athens: Κέντρο Λεξικολογίας
7. ^ van Beek, Lucien (2022), The Reflexes of Syllabic Liquids in Ancient Greek: Linguistic Prehistory of the Greek Dialects and Homeric Kunstsprache, Leiden; Boston: Brill
8. ^ Etygram: ancient etymologies of Greek words, CEPAM, Université Côte d'Azur, http://appsweb-cepam.unice.fr/etygram
9. ^ a b c d e f g h i Diggle, James, et al., eds. (2021), The Cambridge Greek Lexicon, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press
10. ^ a b Πάπυρος–Larousse–Britannica, Μέγα Λεξικό της Ελληνικής Γλώσσας, Athens: Πάπυρος
11. ^ a b c d Rodríguez Adrados, Francisco, et al., eds. (1980–), Diccionario Griego-Español, Madrid: CSIC, http://dge.cchs.csic.es/xdge