κόφινος

Forms

κόφῐνος (kóphinos) m (genitive κοφῐ́νου); second declension^[1]

Etymology

Beekes considers it Pre-Greek.^[2][3] Following Furnée he compares κόφος (kóphos, “basket-load”) and the Hesychian glosses κοψία (kopsía, “earthen pot”) and κόψα (kópsa, “water bucket”), and points to the Pre-Greek suffixes -ιν- and -σα.^[3][2] Chantraine calls it a technical word without an etymology, perhaps a loan.^[4]

Rosół thinks it may be a Semitic loanword, comparing Akkadian quppu (“wicker basket, wooden chest”) and Aramaic words for a box or large basket.^[5] Wiktionary also mentions Hurrian as a possible source.^[1]

The Etymologicum Magnum derived it from κόπος (kópos, “toil”), because it gives toil to those who carry it.^[6]

Earliest recorded meaning

It is first found in Aristophanes' Birds and in Xenophon, meaning a large basket.^[7][8][9]

Semantic evolution

An Attic lexicon notes that it was less Attic than the synonym ἄρριχος (árrhikhos).^[7][4] In Boeotia it was also a dry measure of nine Attic khoínikes (khoînix), and Hesychius records it as a measure too; in Boeotia a debtor who could not pay was punished by having to sit with a basket on his head.^[7][4][10]

In the New Testament it is probably a large, heavy basket for carrying things, named beside the σφυρίς (sphurís).^[11] In later times, as Juvenal shows, it was used especially by Jews.^[7][5]

It was borrowed into Latin as cophinus, the source of English coffin, which first meant a chest or box and only from the 1520s a box for the dead.^[2][12] The Modern Greek word for a deep basket, Modern Greek κοφίνι (kofíni), continues the diminutive κοφίνιον (kophínion).^[13][14]

Timeline

• 5th–4th century BC – Aristophanes and Xenophon use it for a large basket.^[7][8][15]
• 4th century BC – Aristotle uses it as a measure.^[7][15]
• 1st century AD – The Gospels use it for large baskets for carrying things.^[11]
• Early 14th century – English borrows coffin, through Latin and Old French, for a chest for valuables.^[12]
• Modern Greek – The diminutive Modern Greek κοφίνι (kofíni) is the word for a deep basket.^[13]

Meanings

Noun

1. A large basket.^[7][8][11]
2. (Boeotian) A dry measure of nine Attic choenices.^[7][2]

Related words

• Latin cophinus
• English coffin

References

1. ^ a b c d e Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d 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 Beekes, Robert S. P. (2014), Pre-Greek: Phonology, Morphology, Lexicon, ed. Stefan Norbruis, Leiden; Boston: Brill
4. ^ a b c 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 Rosół, Rafał (2013), Frühe semitische Lehnwörter im Griechischen, Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang
6. ^ Gaisford, Thomas, ed. (1848), Etymologicum Magnum, Oxford: Oxford University Press
7. ^ 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
8. ^ a b c Diggle, James, et al., eds. (2021), The Cambridge Greek Lexicon, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press
9. ^ Keersmaekers, Alek (2021–2025), GLAUx: The Greek Language Automated corpus, https://github.com/alekkeersmaekers/glaux
10. ^ Hesychius of Alexandria, Lexicon, ed. Kurt Latte (Α–Ο, Copenhagen 1953–1966) and Moritz Schmidt (Π–Ω, Jena 1858–1868)
11. ^ a b c 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
12. ^ a b Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
13. ^ a b Ινστιτούτο Νεοελληνικών Σπουδών (Ίδρυμα Μανόλη Τριανταφυλλίδη) (1998), Λεξικό της κοινής νεοελληνικής, Thessaloniki: Aristotle University of Thessaloniki
14. ^ Babiniotis, Georgios (2010), Ετυμολογικό λεξικό της νέας ελληνικής γλώσσας [Etymological Dictionary of Modern Greek], Athens: Κέντρο Λεξικολογίας
15. ^ a b Rodríguez Adrados, Francisco, et al., eds. (1980–), Diccionario Griego-Español, Madrid: CSIC, http://dge.cchs.csic.es/xdge