κόλον

Forms

κόλον (kólon) n (genitive κόλου); second declension^[1]

Etymology

The origin is unknown.^[2][3][4] Beekes and Frisk find none of the proposals convincing: Boisacq hesitantly compared κυλλός (kullós, “crooked”) and the Hesychius gloss κελλόν (kellón, “twisted”), others the Cypriot gloss καλίδια (kalídia, “entrails”), and Furnée a group of words for guts such as χόλιξ (khólix) and χοάς (khoás).^[2][3] It is not related to κῶλον (kôlon, “limb”), whose form it took in late Greek.^[1][4]

Ancient grammarians, quoted by Athenaeus, gave it the meaning “food” and saw it in κόλαξ (kólax, “flatterer”), δύσκολος (dúskolos), βουκόλος (boukólos) and even κοιλία (koilía); modern scholars reject these links.^[5][4][6]

Earliest recorded meaning

Aristophanes uses it in the Knights, in the plural, of the guts of an animal eaten as tripe.^[7][5][2]

Semantic evolution

In Aristotle's Parts of Animals it is an anatomical term, the large intestine or colon, and so also in Nicander and Pollux.^[5][2] A papyrus of the 3rd century BC uses it for some food kept in a pot, which may be the source of the grammarians' gloss “food”.^[5][2]

In late Greek it was spelled κῶλον (kôlon), under the influence of its homonym meaning “limb” and of Latin cūlus, and late physicians derived κωλικός (kōlikós) “of the colon” from it.^[4] Latin borrowed the word as Latin colon, through which it entered the anatomical vocabulary of Europe.^[4][6] Modern Greek uses κόλον (kólon) as a learned medical term for the colon.^[8][6]

Timeline

• 5th–4th century BC – Aristophanes uses it of tripe.^[7][5][9]
• 4th century BC – Aristotle uses it of the large intestine.^[5][9]
• 3rd century BC – A papyrus uses it of a food preserved in a pot.^[5][2]
• 2nd century BC – Nicander uses it of the colon.^[5][9]
• 2nd–3rd century AD – Athenaeus records the grammarians' view that it meant “food”.^[5][4][9]
• Modern Greek – The learned word names the colon.^[8][6]

Meanings

Noun

1. The colon, the main part of the large intestine.^[5][7]
2. (in the plural) The guts of an animal eaten as food, tripe.^[7][4]
3. A kind of preserved food kept in a pot.^[5][2]
4. (grammarians) Food in general, as an ancient explanation of words like κόλαξ (kólax).^[5]

Word family

• κωλικός (kōlikós)

Related words

• Latin colon
• English colon

Usage notes

Hesychius' entry for the form gives, beside “intestine”, the sense “large he-goat without horns”.^[10]

References

1. ^ a b c d e 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 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. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l Liddell, Henry George; Scott, Robert; Jones, Henry Stuart (1940), A Greek-English Lexicon, 9th ed., Oxford: Clarendon Press
6. ^ a b c d Babiniotis, Georgios (2010), Ετυμολογικό λεξικό της νέας ελληνικής γλώσσας [Etymological Dictionary of Modern Greek], Athens: Κέντρο Λεξικολογίας
7. ^ a b c d Diggle, James, et al., eds. (2021), The Cambridge Greek Lexicon, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press
8. ^ a b Ινστιτούτο Νεοελληνικών Σπουδών (Ίδρυμα Μανόλη Τριανταφυλλίδη) (1998), Λεξικό της κοινής νεοελληνικής, Thessaloniki: Aristotle University of Thessaloniki
9. ^ a b c d Rodríguez Adrados, Francisco, et al., eds. (1980–), Diccionario Griego-Español, Madrid: CSIC, http://dge.cchs.csic.es/xdge
10. ^ Hesychius of Alexandria, Lexicon, ed. Kurt Latte (Α–Ο, Copenhagen 1953–1966) and Moritz Schmidt (Π–Ω, Jena 1858–1868)