Etymologically
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κολοβός

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Pronunciation

  • 5th-century BC Attic: /ko.lo.bós/[1]
  • 4th-century AD Koine: /ko.loˈβos/[1]
  • 10th-century Byzantine: /ko.loˈvos/[1]

Forms

κολοβός (kolobós) m or f (neuter κολοβόν); second declension[1]

Etymology

Beekes considers it Pre-Greek: it is an enlarged form of κόλος (kólos, “docked, hornless”), and its suffix ⟨-οβ-⟩ cannot be explained in Indo-European terms.[2][3][1] He compares κλαμβός (klambós) and lists the word among the Pre-Greek adjectives that mark a quality.[2][3] Babiniotis also derives it from that adjective.[4] Pokorny places κόλος (kólos) under a root Proto-Indo-European *kel- (“to hit, cut down”).[5]

Earliest recorded meaning

Xenophon and Plato are the first to use it, in the 5th–4th century BC:[6][7] Xenophon of maimed animals in a hunt, and Plato, with a genitive, of a herd that lacks horns.[8][9]

Semantic evolution

Aristotle applies it to animals born with a part missing, to offerings (nothing maimed may be brought to the gods, only what is whole), to a chipped cup, and in rhetoric to a period cut short.[8][9] Theophrastus uses it of stunted flowers, and papyri of the 3rd century BC of a maimed donkey.[8] Later writers widen it to anything short or truncated: short garments in Artemidorus, undersized people and a low wall in Procopius, a truncated cone in Hero.[8] In early Christian writing it describes hewn stones with a piece broken off, an image of what falls short.[10]

It was borrowed as Latin colobos,[11] and as Coptic ⲕⲟⲗⲟⲃⲟⲥ (kolobos), recorded in Sahidic manuscripts from about AD 600.[12] Medieval vernacular Greek kept the word,[13] and it lives on as κολοβός (kolovós), “cut short, maimed”, also of an animal with a docked tail.[14][15]

Timeline

  • 5th–4th century BC – Xenophon and Plato use it of maimed animals and of a hornless herd.[8][6]
  • 4th century BC – Aristotle uses it of a chipped cup and of a curtailed rhetorical period.[8][9][6]
  • 3rd century BC – A papyrus of the Zenon archive describes a maimed donkey.[8]
  • 2nd century AD – Artemidorus uses it of short garments.[8][6]
  • 6th century AD – Procopius applies it to undersized people and a low wall.[8][6]
  • About AD 600 – It is first recorded as a loanword in Coptic.[12]
  • Modern Greek – κολοβός (kolovós) still means maimed or cut short.[14][15]

Meanings

Adjective

  1. Docked, curtailed; with a genitive, lacking a part, as a herd lacking horns.[8][9]
  2. Maimed, mutilated, of people and animals.[8][9]
  3. Of things, missing a piece, broken off; of a cup, chipped.[8][9]
  4. Of plants, stunted; of people, undersized.[8]
  5. Generally, short, of garments or a sword; of a wall, low; of a cone, truncated.[8]
  6. In rhetoric and metre, curtailed, incomplete; of a metrical unit, missing a syllable.[8][9]

Word family

  • κολοβότης (kolobótēs)
  • κολοβόω (kolobóō)
  • κολόβωμα (kolóbōma)
  • κολόβαξ (kolóbax)
  • κολόβιον (kolóbion)
  • κόλος (kólos)
  • κλαμβός (klambós)

Usage notes

Hesychius glosses it as “short, small, deprived”, and also as the name of a kitharodic nome.[16]

References

  1. ^ a b c d e Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
  2. ^ 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
  3. ^ a b Beekes, Robert S. P. (2014), Pre-Greek: Phonology, Morphology, Lexicon, ed. Stefan Norbruis, Leiden; Boston: Brill
  4. ^ Babiniotis, Georgios (2010), Ετυμολογικό λεξικό της νέας ελληνικής γλώσσας [Etymological Dictionary of Modern Greek], Athens: Κέντρο Λεξικολογίας
  5. ^ Pokorny, Julius (1959), Indogermanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, Bern; Munich: Francke
  6. ^ a b c d e Rodríguez Adrados, Francisco, et al., eds. (1980–), Diccionario Griego-Español, Madrid: CSIC, http://dge.cchs.csic.es/xdge
  7. ^ Keersmaekers, Alek (2021–2025), GLAUx: The Greek Language Automated corpus, https://github.com/alekkeersmaekers/glaux
  8. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o 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 Diggle, James, et al., eds. (2021), The Cambridge Greek Lexicon, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press
  10. ^ 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
  11. ^ Saalfeld, Günther Alexander (1874), Index Graecorum vocabulorum in linguam latinam translatorum, Berlin: Weidmann
  12. ^ a b Database and Dictionary of Greek Loanwords in Coptic (DDGLC), Freie Universität Berlin and Universität Leipzig
  13. ^ Kriaras, Emmanuel, Επιτομή του Λεξικού της μεσαιωνικής ελληνικής δημώδους γραμματείας 1100–1669, Κέντρο Ελληνικής Γλώσσας, https://www.greek-language.gr
  14. ^ a b Ινστιτούτο Νεοελληνικών Σπουδών (Ίδρυμα Μανόλη Τριανταφυλλίδη) (1998), Λεξικό της κοινής νεοελληνικής, Thessaloniki: Aristotle University of Thessaloniki
  15. ^ a b Πάπυρος–Larousse–Britannica, Μέγα Λεξικό της Ελληνικής Γλώσσας, Athens: Πάπυρος
  16. ^ Hesychius of Alexandria, Lexicon, ed. Kurt Latte (Α–Ο, Copenhagen 1953–1966) and Moritz Schmidt (Π–Ω, Jena 1858–1868)