καπνός

Forms

καπνός (kapnós) m (genitive κᾰπνοῦ); second declension^[1] Mycenaean Greek ka-pi-ni-ja (PY Vn 46), probably καπνία “chimney”, a derivative.^[2]

Etymology

Chantraine and Frisk start from *κϝαπνός (*kwapnós), whose stem matches Lithuanian kvãpas (“breath, smell”), beside Lithuanian kvė̃pti (“to breathe, gasp”); whether Latin vapor (“steam”) belongs here, with its ⟨v⟩ for the expected ⟨qu⟩, is an old, unsettled question.^[3][4] Wiktionary has it as inherited from Proto-Hellenic *kapnós, from Proto-Indo-European *kwep- (“to smoke, boil, move violently”), which appears to be a European substrate word, and compares Old Church Slavonic кꙑпѣти (kypěti, “to boil”).^[1][5] Chantraine explains the loss of the ⟨ϝ⟩ as a dissimilation from the following labial, already in the second millennium BC.^[3]

Beekes finds an Indo-European origin improbable, because Mycenaean already has no /w/ and the dissimilation cannot be shown, and because a stem kap-, the u-stem κάπυς (kápus, “breath”) and the suffix -n- after a consonant are all common in Pre-Greek; given the Balto-Slavic and Latin words, he thinks it best to assume a European substrate word.^[6] IE-CoR also judges the connections uncertain because of the irregular sound changes they need.^[2]

Ancient grammarians derived it from a verb meaning “to breathe”, or from καίω (kaíō, “to burn”) and πνοή (pnoḗ, “breath”).^[7]

Earliest recorded meaning

It is found from the first book of the Iliad on, for smoke, and in the Odyssey also for the spray of the sea.^[8][9][10]

Semantic evolution

Smoke of sacrifice, of incense and of campfires is the main sense, and the Odyssey uses it also for soot that dirties clothes and for spray and mist.^[9][8] As the type of something worthless, it gave proverbs: Aeschylus and Sophocles speak of the “shadow of smoke”, Aristophanes and Plato pair smoke with idle talk, and Plato records the proverb of fleeing from the smoke into the fire.^[8][9] Simonides used it of slander.^[9]

The Septuagint and the Book of Revelation use it of the smoke of the furnace and of the cloud in which God appears.^[11] Medieval Greek kept it, and Modern Greek καπνός (kapnós) means smoke; a second, learned καπνός, after the verb καπνίζω “to smoke”, names tobacco.^[12][13]

Timeline

• Homer – The Iliad and the Odyssey use it for smoke and spray.^[8][9][10]
• 6th–5th century BC – Aeschylus calls something worthless the shadow of smoke.^[8]
• 5th–4th century BC – Plato quotes the proverb of escaping the smoke into the fire.^[9]
• 1st century AD – Revelation describes smoke rising like that of a furnace.^[11]
• Modern Greek – καπνός means smoke and also tobacco.^[13]

Meanings

Noun

1. Smoke, of fire, sacrifice or incense; soot.^[8][9]
2. Vapour, steam, mist, sea spray.^[8][9]
3. (figurative) Something empty or worthless; idle talk.^[8][9]

Word family

• καπνίζω (kapnízō)
• κάπνη (kápnē)
• καπνοδόκη (kapnodókē)

Related words

• Latin vapor

Usage notes

The proverb καπνοῦ σκιά, “the shadow of smoke”, was said of something worth nothing.^[8]

References

1. ^ a b c d e Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b Heggarty, Paul, et al. (2023), Indo-European Cognate Relationships (IE-CoR), Leipzig: Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, https://iecor.clld.org
3. ^ a b 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
4. ^ Frisk, Hjalmar (1960–1972), Griechisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3 vols, Heidelberg: Carl Winter
5. ^ Pokorny, Julius (1959), Indogermanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, Bern; Munich: Francke
6. ^ 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
7. ^ Etygram: ancient etymologies of Greek words, CEPAM, Université Côte d'Azur, http://appsweb-cepam.unice.fr/etygram
8. ^ 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
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 Keersmaekers, Alek (2021–2025), GLAUx: The Greek Language Automated corpus, https://github.com/alekkeersmaekers/glaux
11. ^ a b Bauer, Walter; Danker, Frederick W., et al. (2000), A Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament and Other Early Christian Literature, 3rd ed., Chicago: University of Chicago Press
12. ^ Kriaras, Emmanuel, Επιτομή του Λεξικού της μεσαιωνικής ελληνικής δημώδους γραμματείας 1100–1669, Κέντρο Ελληνικής Γλώσσας, https://www.greek-language.gr
13. ^ a b Ινστιτούτο Νεοελληνικών Σπουδών (Ίδρυμα Μανόλη Τριανταφυλλίδη) (1998), Λεξικό της κοινής νεοελληνικής, Thessaloniki: Aristotle University of Thessaloniki