Etymologically
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κίστη

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Pronunciation

  • 5th-century BC Attic: /kís.tɛː/[1]
  • 4th-century AD Koine: /ˈcis.ti/[1]
  • 10th-century Byzantine: /ˈcis.ti/[1]

Forms

κῐ́στη (kístē) f (genitive κῐ́στης); first declension[1] Doric κίστα (kísta).[2] Callimachus has the spelling κείστη.[3]

Etymology

Beekes compares Middle Irish cess (“basket, wickerwork causeway, beehive”) and Old Welsh cest (“basket”), which point to a form *kisteh₂-; if they belong together, the most likely explanation is a European loanword.[4][1] Frisk gives the same comparison, the word then meaning originally a woven container, and lists other proposals (a link with κεῖμαι (keîmai, “to lie”), with Latin cūra, or with Lithuanian kìšti (“to stick in”)); Chantraine calls them risky and thinks it may be a borrowing.[5][6] Wiktionary mentions Bernal's proposal of an Egyptian source, which has formal problems.[1]

Earliest recorded meaning

In the Odyssey it is a basket or hamper for food.[3][2][7]

Semantic evolution

In Attic it is a basket or hamper, for example for provisions in Aristophanes, and also a writing case.[3][2] Theophrastus mentions baskets made of bark, and in Theocritus and Plutarch it is the basket carried in religious processions.[3][2] Ammonius distinguishes it from the κιβωτός (kibōtós, “chest”).[3]

It was borrowed as Latin cista, from which come most of the European words, among them Irish ciste and Old High German kista.[4][8] English cist, from Latin, is a sepulchral chest in British archaeology (1804) and the basket for sacred objects in Greek processions (1847).[9]

Timeline

  • Homer – The Odyssey uses it for a basket of food.[3][7]
  • 5th century BC – Aristophanes uses it for a hamper and a writing case.[3][2]
  • 4th–3rd century BC – Theophrastus describes baskets of bark.[3]
  • 1804 – English cist is recorded in archaeology.[9]

Meanings

Noun

  1. A basket, hamper, especially for food.[3][2]
  2. A basket carried in religious processions.[2]
  3. A writing case or desk.[3]
  4. A voting urn.[3]

Word family

  • κιστίς (kistís)
  • κιστοφόρος (kistophóros)

References

  1. ^ a b c d e f Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
  2. ^ a b c d e f g 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 Liddell, Henry George; Scott, Robert; Jones, Henry Stuart (1940), A Greek-English Lexicon, 9th ed., Oxford: Clarendon Press
  4. ^ a b 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. ^ Frisk, Hjalmar (1960–1972), Griechisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3 vols, Heidelberg: Carl Winter
  6. ^ 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 Keersmaekers, Alek (2021–2025), GLAUx: The Greek Language Automated corpus, https://github.com/alekkeersmaekers/glaux
  8. ^ Saalfeld, Günther Alexander (1874), Index Graecorum vocabulorum in linguam latinam translatorum, Berlin: Weidmann
  9. ^ a b Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com