κόμμι

Forms

κόμμῐ (kómmi) n (genitive κόμμεως); third declension^[1]

Etymology

It is borrowed from Egyptian qmyt (“acacia resin, gum”),^[2][1][3] or from qmy (“anointing oil”).^[1] Athenaeus already called it a foreign word.^[4]

From κόμμι came Latin cummi, later gummi, the source of the other European forms.^[2][5] Beekes rejects the idea that Greek and Latin borrowed the word separately from Egyptian, since two independent loans would hardly have taken the same form.^[2]

Earliest recorded meaning

It is first found in Herodotus and in the Hippocratic treatise On Joints.^[4][6][3]

Semantic evolution

The gum came from the acacia, as Theophrastus and Dioscorides say.^[4][7] Usually the word is not declined, but some writers inflect it, with a genitive κόμμεως and datives κόμμει and κόμμιδι.^[4] Coptic has the word as Coptic ⲕⲟⲙⲙⲓ (kommi), which the DDGLC lists as a borrowing from Greek, with many spellings in Sahidic manuscripts from about AD 300.^[8]

Modern Greek κόμμι (kómmi) is a learned revival of the ancient word, used of plant gums and of rubber.^[9][10]

Timeline

• 5th century BC – Herodotus and the Hippocratic writers use it for gum.^[4][6]
• 4th–3rd century BC – Theophrastus says that it comes from the acacia.^[4][11]
• 1st century AD – Dioscorides, too, names the acacia as its source.^[4][11]
• About AD 300 – The earliest Sahidic Coptic manuscripts with the borrowed word date from this time.^[8]
• Modern Greek – Κόμμι is a learned revival of the ancient word.^[9]

Meanings

Noun

1. Gum, especially that of the acacia.^[4][3]

Related words

• Latin cummi
• English gum

References

1. ^ a b c d e f Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c 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 Diggle, James, et al., eds. (2021), The Cambridge Greek Lexicon, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press
4. ^ a b c d e f g h Liddell, Henry George; Scott, Robert; Jones, Henry Stuart (1940), A Greek-English Lexicon, 9th ed., Oxford: Clarendon Press
5. ^ Saalfeld, Günther Alexander (1874), Index Graecorum vocabulorum in linguam latinam translatorum, Berlin: Weidmann
6. ^ a b Keersmaekers, Alek (2021–2025), GLAUx: The Greek Language Automated corpus, https://github.com/alekkeersmaekers/glaux
7. ^ 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
8. ^ a b Database and Dictionary of Greek Loanwords in Coptic (DDGLC), Freie Universität Berlin and Universität Leipzig
9. ^ a b Ινστιτούτο Νεοελληνικών Σπουδών (Ίδρυμα Μανόλη Τριανταφυλλίδη) (1998), Λεξικό της κοινής νεοελληνικής, Thessaloniki: Aristotle University of Thessaloniki
10. ^ Babiniotis, Georgios (2010), Ετυμολογικό λεξικό της νέας ελληνικής γλώσσας [Etymological Dictionary of Modern Greek], Athens: Κέντρο Λεξικολογίας
11. ^ a b Rodríguez Adrados, Francisco, et al., eds. (1980–), Diccionario Griego-Español, Madrid: CSIC, http://dge.cchs.csic.es/xdge