κόκκος

Pronunciation

• IPA (5th-century BC Attic): /kók.kos/^[1]
• IPA (4th-century AD Koine): /ˈko.kos/^[1]
• IPA (10th-century Byzantine): /ˈko.kos/^[1]

Forms

κόκκος (kókkos) m (genitive κόκκου); second declension^[1]

Etymology

The origin is unknown.^[2][3] Beekes thinks it probably Pre-Greek, from Pre-Greek, and Frisk a loanword, noting the popular doubling of the consonant.^[2][3] Alessio compared Spanish cuesco (“stone of a fruit”) and supposed a Mediterranean ⟨*kosko-⟩, but Furnée rejected this.^[2][1]

Earliest recorded meaning

The Homeric Hymn to Demeter uses it for the pomegranate seed that Hades gives Persephone to eat.^[4][5]

Semantic evolution

It was a grain or seed of any kind: of the pomegranate in Herodotus, of the poppy, pine and wheat, and in the New Testament the mustard seed and the grain of wheat.^[4][6][5] Timon wrote of a man with “not a grain of sense”.^[4]

From the 4th century BC it was the “berry” of the kermes oak, really the bodies of a scale insect, which gave a scarlet dye; hence it meant scarlet itself, and the oak.^[4][6][2] Medical writers used it for a pill and a small measure, poets for the testicles, and Hesychius records it for the female parts.^[4][7]

Its derivative κόκκινος (kókkinos, “scarlet”) gave Modern Greek its everyday word for “red”.^[2][8] Latin borrowed it as coccum.^[1] Modern Greek κόκκος (kókkos) is a learned word for a grain or particle, and through New Latin coccus for a kind of bacterium.^[8]

Timeline

• 7th–6th century BC (probably) – The Homeric Hymn to Demeter uses it for a pomegranate seed.^[4][5]
• 5th century BC – Herodotus uses it for pomegranate seeds.^[4][5]
• 4th–3rd century BC – Theophrastus uses it for the kermes “berry” used for scarlet dye.^[4][2]
• 1st century AD – The Gospels use it for the mustard seed and the grain of wheat.^[6][5]
• 1st century AD – Dioscorides uses it for the kermes oak.^[4]

Meanings

Noun

1. A grain, seed or kernel, especially of the pomegranate.^[4][5]
2. The “berry” of the kermes oak, used for scarlet dye; the colour scarlet.^[4][6]
3. The kermes oak, Quercus coccifera.^[4][2]
4. (medicine) A pill; a small measure.^[4]
5. (plural) The testicles.^[4]

Word family

• κόκκινος (kókkinos)
• κόκκαλος (kókkalos)
• κοκκοθραύστης (kokkothraústēs)

Related words

• Latin coccum

References

1. ^ a b c d e f Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f g 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 Frisk, Hjalmar (1960–1972), Griechisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3 vols, Heidelberg: Carl Winter
4. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n Liddell, Henry George; Scott, Robert; Jones, Henry Stuart (1940), A Greek-English Lexicon, 9th ed., Oxford: Clarendon Press
5. ^ a b c d e f Diggle, James, et al., eds. (2021), The Cambridge Greek Lexicon, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press
6. ^ a b c d 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
7. ^ Hesychius of Alexandria, Lexicon, ed. Kurt Latte (Α–Ο, Copenhagen 1953–1966) and Moritz Schmidt (Π–Ω, Jena 1858–1868)
8. ^ a b Ινστιτούτο Νεοελληνικών Σπουδών (Ίδρυμα Μανόλη Τριανταφυλλίδη) (1998), Λεξικό της κοινής νεοελληνικής, Thessaloniki: Aristotle University of Thessaloniki