κόσμος

Pronunciation

• IPA (5th-century BC Attic): /kóz.mos/^[1]
• IPA (4th-century AD Koine): /ˈkoz.mos/^[1]
• IPA (10th-century Byzantine): /ˈkoz.mos/^[1]

Forms

κόσμος (kósmos) m (genitive κόσμου); second declension^[1]

Etymology

It is inherited from Proto-Hellenic *kónsmos,^[1] inherited from Proto-Indo-European *ḱónsmos, a noun in -μος from the root *ḱens- (“to announce, put in order”).^[1][2] Beekes considers *ḱoNs-mo- the most probable reconstruction; it makes the word a relative of Latin cēnseō (“to assess, estimate”) and Sanskrit शंसति (śaṃsati, “to praise”), and the original meaning would have been “to put in order by speaking”, with “to adorn” a later development within Greek.^[2][1] Within Greek it may be related to κέκασμαι (kékasmai, “to excel”).^[3][2]

Frisk found none of the many proposals satisfactory: others had connected it with κεδνός (kednós, “careful, trusty”), with Latin corpus or with κομψός (kompsós, “refined”).^[4][5]

Earliest recorded meaning

Homer uses it for order and for ornament: κατὰ κόσμον means “duly, properly”, and οὐ κατὰ κόσμον “in an unseemly way”.^[6][7] It is also an ornament for a horse and a woman's dress, and in the Odyssey the “making” of the wooden horse.^[6][8]

Semantic evolution

In Classical Greek it is order of every kind: the order of troops (fleeing “in no order”), good behaviour and discipline, and the order of a state, its constitution or government, as the Spartan constitution in Herodotus or the oligarchy in Thucydides.^[7][8] The sense “ornament” continued, of dress, of equipment, and in rhetoric of the ornaments of speech in Isocrates and Aristotle.^[7][8] It could also mean honour or credit: in Sophocles, “silence is a woman's ornament”.^[7] In Crete the chief magistrates were called κόσμοι.^[7][2]

In philosophy it became the ordered world, the universe, first with Pythagoras or Parmenides.^[7][2] Heraclitus says that “this cosmos” was made by no god or man, but always was, is and will be fire.^[7] Xenophon still speaks of “what the sophists call the cosmos”, but in Plato and Aristotle it is the normal term, and Epicurus speaks of many worlds.^[7]

In Koine it came to mean the world of men: the Septuagint uses it for the universe, the earth, mankind and ornament,^[9] and the New Testament for adornment, for the inhabited earth, for the way of the world, and for people estranged from God, as in “what does it profit a man to gain the whole world?”^[10][11][5]

Medieval vernacular Greek used it for an ornament, the universe, the earth or a country, mankind, and a crowd of people.^[12] Modern Greek κόσμος (kósmos) is the universe, the world and also people, society; some senses follow French monde.^[13][5] English cosmos is recorded c. 1200, but became popular only after 1848, as the equivalent of Humboldt's Kosmos.^[14]

Timeline

• Homer – The Iliad and the Odyssey use it for order and for ornament.^[6][7]
• 6th–5th century BC – Heraclitus says the world-order always was and will be fire.^[7][15]
• 5th century BC – Herodotus uses it for the Spartan constitution, and Sophocles calls silence a woman's ornament.^[7][15]
• 5th–4th century BC – Plato uses it for the universe.^[7][15]
• 4th century BC – Aristotle describes the κόσμοι, the magistrates of Crete.^[7][15]
• 1st century AD – The New Testament uses it for the world estranged from God.^[10][11]
• c. 1200 – English cosmos is first recorded.^[14]

Meanings

Noun

1. order; κατὰ κόσμον, duly, properly.^[7][8]
2. Good behaviour, discipline.^[7]
3. Form, fashion; the making of something.^[7][8]
4. The order of a state, its constitution or government.^[7][8]
5. ornament, adornment, dress; ornaments of speech.^[7][8]
6. Honour, credit.^[7]
7. (Crete) A chief magistrate, or the body of them.^[7][2]
8. (philosophy) The world-order, the universe.^[7][8]
9. (Koine) The world, the earth; mankind; in the New Testament, the world estranged from God.^[9][11]

Word family

• εὔκοσμος (eúkosmos)
• κοσμέω (kosméō)
• κόσμησις (kósmēsis)
• κόσμιος (kósmios)
• κοσμικός (kosmikós)
• κοσμητικός (kosmētikós)
• κοσμοπολίτης (kosmopolítēs)

Related words

• Latin cēnseō
• English cosmopolitan
• English microcosm

Usage notes

Ancient grammarians derived κόσμος from κέκασμαι (kékasmai, “to excel”), which modern scholars also connect with it, or from κεῖσθαι ἅμα, “to lie together”.^[3]

References

1. ^ a b c d e f g 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 Etygram: ancient etymologies of Greek words, CEPAM, Université Côte d'Azur, http://appsweb-cepam.unice.fr/etygram
4. ^ Frisk, Hjalmar (1960–1972), Griechisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3 vols, Heidelberg: Carl Winter
5. ^ a b c Πάπυρος–Larousse–Britannica, Μέγα Λεξικό της Ελληνικής Γλώσσας, Athens: Πάπυρος
6. ^ a b c Cunliffe, Richard John (1924), A Lexicon of the Homeric Dialect, London: Blackie and Son
7. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t u Liddell, Henry George; Scott, Robert; Jones, Henry Stuart (1940), A Greek-English Lexicon, 9th ed., Oxford: Clarendon Press
8. ^ a b c d e f g h Diggle, James, et al., eds. (2021), The Cambridge Greek Lexicon, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press
9. ^ a b Lust, Johan; Eynikel, Erik; Hauspie, Katrin (2003), Greek-English Lexicon of the Septuagint, rev. ed., Stuttgart: Deutsche Bibelgesellschaft
10. ^ a b 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
11. ^ a b c United Bible Societies (2023), UBS Dictionary of the Greek New Testament (revised Louw–Nida semantic domains), open-licence ed.
12. ^ Kriaras, Emmanuel, Επιτομή του Λεξικού της μεσαιωνικής ελληνικής δημώδους γραμματείας 1100–1669, Κέντρο Ελληνικής Γλώσσας, https://www.greek-language.gr
13. ^ Ινστιτούτο Νεοελληνικών Σπουδών (Ίδρυμα Μανόλη Τριανταφυλλίδη) (1998), Λεξικό της κοινής νεοελληνικής, Thessaloniki: Aristotle University of Thessaloniki
14. ^ a b Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
15. ^ a b c d Rodríguez Adrados, Francisco, et al., eds. (1980–), Diccionario Griego-Español, Madrid: CSIC, http://dge.cchs.csic.es/xdge