κόθορνος

Pronunciation

• 5th-century BC Attic: /kó.tʰor.nos/^[1]
• 4th-century AD Koine: /ˈko.θor.nos/^[1]
• 10th-century Byzantine: /ˈko.θor.nos/^[1]

Forms

κόθορνος (kóthornos) m (genitive κοθόρνου); second declension^[1]

Etymology

Beekes considers it more probably Pre-Greek than a Lydian loan, which Jongkees proposed on the strength of the ending and of a passage of Herodotus on the Lydians.^[2][3][1] Babiniotis gives the Lydian loan as probable.^[4]

Earliest recorded meaning

Herodotus first mentions it as a kind of high boot.^[5][6]

Semantic evolution

In Herodotus and Aristophanes it is a soft boot, worn especially by women and so suggesting unmanliness.^[7] Tragic actors playing heroes wore it, and in Aristophanes' Frogs it is the emblem of Dionysus as god of tragedy.^[5] Since it fitted either foot, Theramenes was nicknamed Κόθορνος, the turncoat, and a proverb called a fickle man “more changeable than a buskin”.^[5][7]

It was borrowed as Latin cothurnus.^[8] Modern Greek κόθορνος (kóthornos) is a learned word.^[9]

Timeline

• 5th century BC – Herodotus mentions it as a high boot.^[5]
• 5th–4th century BC – Aristophanes' Frogs makes it the emblem of tragic Dionysus.^[5]
• 5th–4th century BC – Xenophon reports that Theramenes was nicknamed Κόθορνος.^[5][7]
• Modern Greek – κόθορνος (kóthornos) survives as a learned word.^[9]

Meanings

Noun

1. A high soft boot that fitted either foot, a buskin, worn especially by women.^[5][7]
2. The cothurnus of tragic actors; hence an emblem of tragedy.^[5]
3. (nickname) A turncoat, one who changes sides.^[5][7]

Related words

• Latin cothurnus

References

1. ^ a b c d e Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ 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. ^ 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. ^ Babiniotis, Georgios (2010), Ετυμολογικό λεξικό της νέας ελληνικής γλώσσας [Etymological Dictionary of Modern Greek], Athens: Κέντρο Λεξικολογίας
5. ^ 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
6. ^ Keersmaekers, Alek (2021–2025), GLAUx: The Greek Language Automated corpus, https://github.com/alekkeersmaekers/glaux
7. ^ a b c d e Diggle, James, et al., eds. (2021), The Cambridge Greek Lexicon, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press
8. ^ Saalfeld, Günther Alexander (1874), Index Graecorum vocabulorum in linguam latinam translatorum, Berlin: Weidmann
9. ^ a b Ινστιτούτο Νεοελληνικών Σπουδών (Ίδρυμα Μανόλη Τριανταφυλλίδη) (1998), Λεξικό της κοινής νεοελληνικής, Thessaloniki: Aristotle University of Thessaloniki