κακκάω

Forms

κᾰκκᾰ́ω (kakkáō) ^[1]

Etymology

It is inherited from Proto-Hellenic *kakkajō,^[1] from the nursery word Proto-Indo-European *kakka- (“to defecate”).^[1][2] Beekes, Frisk and Chantraine call it a word of children's language, with an expressive double consonant.^[3][4][5]

Cognate with Latin cacō, Middle Irish caccaim, German kacken, Dutch kakken, Russian какать (kákatʹ) and Old Armenian քակոր (kʻakor, “dung”).^[3][1][2] Pokorny tentatively adds κακός (kakós, “bad”) as a nursery word of the same kind.^[2]

Earliest recorded meaning

It is found only in Aristophanes' Clouds (1384, 1390), as a child's word for relieving itself.^[6][3][5]

Semantic evolution

The related noun κάκκη (kákkē), “human excrement”, occurs in Aristophanes' Peace (162).^[3][5] Dvoretsky and Korinthios treat the verb as the comic and childish equivalent of the ordinary χέζω (khézō).^[7][8] Pape prefers this spelling to the variant κακάω.^[9]

Timeline

• 5th–4th century BC – Aristophanes uses it in the Clouds, and the noun κάκκη (kákkē) in the Peace.^[6][3]

Meanings

Verb

1. (childish) To defecate, to “do a poo”.^[6][3][5]

Related words

• κάκκη (kákkē)
• Latin cacō

References

1. ^ a b c d e f g Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c Pokorny, Julius (1959), Indogermanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, Bern; Munich: Francke
3. ^ 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
4. ^ Frisk, Hjalmar (1960–1972), Griechisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3 vols, Heidelberg: Carl Winter
5. ^ a b c d 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 Liddell, Henry George; Scott, Robert; Jones, Henry Stuart (1940), A Greek-English Lexicon, 9th ed., Oxford: Clarendon Press
7. ^ Дворецкий, И. Х. (1958), Древнегреческо-русский словарь, Moscow: ГИС
8. ^ Korinthios, J. (2025), Grande Dizionario Greco Classico: Greco–Italiano, digital ed., Milan: Hoepli
9. ^ Pape, Wilhelm (1914), Griechisch-deutsches Handwörterbuch, 3rd ed., rev. Max Sengebusch, Braunschweig: Vieweg