κολοσσός
Pronunciation
- 5th-century BC Attic: /ko.los.sós/[1]
- 4th-century AD Koine: /ko.losˈsos/[1]
- 10th-century Byzantine: /ko.losˈsos/[1]
Forms
κολοσσός (kolossós) m (genitive κολοσσοῦ); second declension[1]
Etymology
Beekes takes it from Pre-Greek: the element -σσ- typically points to Pre-Greek, where it may stand for an earlier palatal as in θάλασσα (thálassa, “sea”), and the word has variants with -ττ- and -σ-.[2][3] Chantraine thinks the ending proves a Mediterranean loanword, and recalls Benveniste's comparison with place names such as Κολοσσαί (Kolossaí) and Κολοφών (Kolophṓn).[4] Boisacq, cited by Frisk and Beekes, compared the equally obscure κολεκάνος (kolekános, “tall, thin man”); the Indo-European etymologies proposed are rejected.[5][2] Wiktionary considers it perhaps Minoan.[1]
Earliest recorded meaning
Its first text is Aeschylus' Agamemnon, where it means statues in general.[6][7]
Semantic evolution
Its original sense was a statue of human form in general, and at Cyrene it named small figures of a man and a woman, of wood or clay, standing for absent persons.[8][2][6] Herodotus used it only of the gigantic statues of Egypt.[6] From the Hellenistic period it meant a statue larger than life: Polybius uses it for the Colossus of Rhodes.[6][9] The sense “huge, gigantic” comes from that statue.[8]
It was borrowed as Latin colossus, which gave English colossus and French colosse and the adjective colossal.[10][11] Modern Greek κολοσσός (kolossós) is a learned word for a giant statue and, in a sense calqued on French, for anything of enormous size, or a person outstanding in some quality.[12]
Timeline
- 6th–5th century BC – Aeschylus uses it for statues.[6][7][13]
- 5th century BC – Herodotus uses it for the gigantic statues of Egypt.[6][9][13]
- 2nd century BC – Polybius uses it for the Colossus of Rhodes.[9][13]
- 1st century BC – Diodorus Siculus uses the form κολοττός.[6][13]
- Late 14th century – English borrows colossus from Latin.[11]
- Modern Greek – κολοσσός is a giant statue and anything of enormous size.[12]
Meanings
Noun
- A gigantic statue, a colossus, especially of the Egyptian statues and the Colossus of Rhodes.[6][9]
- A statue in general.[6][9]
- (Cyrene) A small figure standing for an absent person.[6][2]
Related words
References
- ^ a b c d e Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
- ^ a b c d 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
- ^ Beekes, Robert S. P. (2014), Pre-Greek: Phonology, Morphology, Lexicon, ed. Stefan Norbruis, Leiden; Boston: Brill
- ^ 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
- ^ Frisk, Hjalmar (1960–1972), Griechisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3 vols, Heidelberg: Carl Winter
- ^ a b c d e f g h i j Liddell, Henry George; Scott, Robert; Jones, Henry Stuart (1940), A Greek-English Lexicon, 9th ed., Oxford: Clarendon Press
- ^ a b Keersmaekers, Alek (2021–2025), GLAUx: The Greek Language Automated corpus, https://github.com/alekkeersmaekers/glaux
- ^ a b Babiniotis, Georgios (2010), Ετυμολογικό λεξικό της νέας ελληνικής γλώσσας [Etymological Dictionary of Modern Greek], Athens: Κέντρο Λεξικολογίας
- ^ a b c d e Diggle, James, et al., eds. (2021), The Cambridge Greek Lexicon, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press
- ^ Saalfeld, Günther Alexander (1874), Index Graecorum vocabulorum in linguam latinam translatorum, Berlin: Weidmann
- ^ a b Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
- ^ a b Ινστιτούτο Νεοελληνικών Σπουδών (Ίδρυμα Μανόλη Τριανταφυλλίδη) (1998), Λεξικό της κοινής νεοελληνικής, Thessaloniki: Aristotle University of Thessaloniki
- ^ a b c d Rodríguez Adrados, Francisco, et al., eds. (1980–), Diccionario Griego-Español, Madrid: CSIC, http://dge.cchs.csic.es/xdge