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κόλλα

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Etymology and origin of the Ancient Greek word κόλλα

Confidence
Uncertain
First attested
400s BC Empedocles, Herodotus

Pronunciation

  • 5th-century BC Attic: /kól.la/[1]
  • 4th-century AD Koine: /ˈkol.la/[1]
  • 10th-century Byzantine: /ˈkol.la/[1]

Forms

κόλλᾰ (kólla) f (genitive κόλλης); first declension[1]

Etymology

The origin is uncertain.[2][3][1] Frisk and Chantraine take it as a feminine noun formed with a yod suffix, but its further history is obscure.[3][4][2]

Since Fick it has been compared with the Slavic word for glue, Proto-Slavic *kъlějь (Russian клей (klej)), and with a verb found only in a small area of Germanic, Middle Dutch helen (“to stick”), and Pokorny groups them under Proto-Indo-European *kol(ē)y- (“glue”), but the details remain unclear.[2][3][5][4] Wiktionary likewise gives Proto-Indo-European *kol- only as a possibility.[1] Beekes also asks whether it might be a Pre-Greek word with a palatalized l.[2]

The Romance words Italian colla and French colle are loans from it.[3][2]

Earliest recorded meaning

It is first found in the 5th century BC, in Empedocles, Herodotus and the Hippocratic writings, meaning glue.[4][6][7]

Semantic evolution

From the start it formed compounds for kinds of glue and things like glue: ταυρόκολλα (taurókolla) ‘glue made from ox hide’ (Polybius), ἰχθυόκολλα (ikhthuókolla) ‘fish glue’ (Dioscorides), and χρυσόκολλα (khrusókolla), the copper mineral malachite (Aristotle, Theophrastus); a κολλεψός was a glue-boiler in Attic inscriptions, and Aristophanes coined κολλομελεῖ ‘he glues his verses together’.[4][2] The verb κολλάω (kolláō) ‘to glue, join fast’ is found from Pindar and Empedocles on.[3][4] Dioscorides also uses the noun for a flour paste.[6]

The Sahidic Coptic borrowing ϭⲟⲗⲗⲉ is found in a manuscript of about AD 600.[8] Medieval vernacular Greek used the word for glue, for birdlime and the lime-twig, and for a syrup, while an unrelated κόλλα ‘sheet of paper’ came from Italian.[9][10] In Modern Greek κόλλα (kólla) continues the ancient word, meaning glue and also starch for clothes.[11][10]

Timeline

  • 5th century BC – Empedocles, Herodotus and the Hippocratic writers use it for glue.[4][6][7]
  • 5th–4th century BC – Aristophanes makes the comic verb κολλομελεῖ from it.[4]
  • 4th century BC – Aristotle uses it, and names malachite χρυσόκολλα (khrusókolla).[6][4]
  • 2nd century BC – Polybius has the compound ταυρόκολλα (taurókolla), ox-hide glue.[4]
  • 1st century AD – Dioscorides uses it for flour paste and names fish glue ἰχθυόκολλα (ikhthuókolla).[6][4]
  • About AD 600 – A Sahidic Coptic manuscript has the borrowing ϭⲟⲗⲗⲉ.[8]
  • 1100–1669 – Vernacular Greek uses it for glue, birdlime and syrup.[9]
  • Modern Greek – κόλλα (kólla) means glue and starch.[11][10]

Meanings

Noun

  1. Glue.[6][4][1]
  2. A flour paste.[6][1]

Word family

  • κολλάω (kolláō)
  • ἰχθυόκολλα (ikhthuókolla)
  • λιθόκολλα (lithókolla)
  • σαρκοκόλλα (sarkokólla)
  • χρυσοκόλλα (khrūsokólla)
  • Italian colla
  • French colle

References

  1. ^ a b c d e f g h Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
  2. ^ a b c d e f 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 c d e Frisk, Hjalmar (1960–1972), Griechisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3 vols, Heidelberg: Carl Winter
  4. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k 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
  5. ^ Pokorny, Julius (1959), Indogermanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, Bern; Munich: Francke
  6. ^ a b c d e f g Liddell, Henry George; Scott, Robert; Jones, Henry Stuart (1940), A Greek-English Lexicon, 9th ed., Oxford: Clarendon Press
  7. ^ a b Keersmaekers, Alek (2021–2025), GLAUx: The Greek Language Automated corpus, https://github.com/alekkeersmaekers/glaux
  8. ^ a b Database and Dictionary of Greek Loanwords in Coptic (DDGLC), Freie Universität Berlin and Universität Leipzig
  9. ^ a b Kriaras, Emmanuel, Επιτομή του Λεξικού της μεσαιωνικής ελληνικής δημώδους γραμματείας 1100–1669, Κέντρο Ελληνικής Γλώσσας, https://www.greek-language.gr
  10. ^ a b c Babiniotis, Georgios (2010), Ετυμολογικό λεξικό της νέας ελληνικής γλώσσας [Etymological Dictionary of Modern Greek], Athens: Κέντρο Λεξικολογίας
  11. ^ a b Ινστιτούτο Νεοελληνικών Σπουδών (Ίδρυμα Μανόλη Τριανταφυλλίδη) (1998), Λεξικό της κοινής νεοελληνικής, Thessaloniki: Aristotle University of Thessaloniki
Cite this entry

“Κόλλα.” Etymologically, 1 Nov. 2026, etymologically.com/grc/%CE%BA%CF%8C%CE%BB%CE%BB%CE%B1. Accessed 2 Nov. 2026.

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