κύπελλον

Pronunciation

• 5th-century BC Attic: /ký.pel.lon/^[1]
• 4th-century AD Koine: /ˈcy.pel.lon/^[1]
• 10th-century Byzantine: /ˈcy.pel.lon/^[1]

Forms

κύπελλον (kúpellon) n (genitive κῠπέλλου); second declension^[1]

Etymology

Beekes considers it Pre-Greek: the word was a widespread wandering word, but its variants point to a Pre-Greek origin, and the ending of the word is better taken as a Pre-Greek suffix.^[2][1] The traditional view splits the ending into the suffixes -λ- and -ιο- and connects κύπη (kúpē, “hole”) (Hesychius), with Latin cūpa (“vat”) and Sanskrit कूप (kū́pa-, “pit, hole”).^[2][1] Furnée compares instead the other meanings of κύπη (kúpē), Hesychius' κύβος (kúbos) and κύμβη (kúmbē, “cup”).^[2][1] A witness in Athenaeus says that both Cyprians and Cretans knew the word.^[2]

Ancient writers derived it from κυφός (kuphós, “bent”), because of the cup's curve (Athenaeus), or from κύπτω (kúptō, “to bend”).^[3]

Earliest recorded meaning

It is frequent in Homer, where it is a drinking-cup, often golden: in the first book of the Iliad Hera takes a cup from her son.^[4][5][6]

Semantic evolution

The word stayed mainly poetic: after Homer it is found in the tragedian Ion, in Lycophron and in Apollonius of Rhodes.^[5][7][6] Quintus of Smyrna uses it for a milk-pail.^[5] At Syracuse, according to Philetas cited by Athenaeus, the plural meant the scraps of bread left on the table.^[5]

Timeline

• Homer – The Iliad and the Odyssey use it often for a drinking-cup.^[4][5]
• 3rd century BC – Apollonius of Rhodes uses it in his epic.^[7][6]
• 2nd–3rd century AD – Athenaeus explains the word from the cup's curve and records the Syracusan sense “bread scraps”.^[3][5]

Meanings

Noun

1. A big-bellied drinking-vessel, a beaker or goblet.^[5][7][4]
2. A milk-vessel.^[5]
3. (Syracuse, in the plural) Scraps of bread left on the table.^[5]

References

1. ^ a b c d e f g 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 Etygram: ancient etymologies of Greek words, CEPAM, Université Côte d'Azur, http://appsweb-cepam.unice.fr/etygram
4. ^ a b c Cunliffe, Richard John (1924), A Lexicon of the Homeric Dialect, London: Blackie and Son
5. ^ a b c d e f g h i Liddell, Henry George; Scott, Robert; Jones, Henry Stuart (1940), A Greek-English Lexicon, 9th ed., Oxford: Clarendon Press
6. ^ a b c Keersmaekers, Alek (2021–2025), GLAUx: The Greek Language Automated corpus, https://github.com/alekkeersmaekers/glaux
7. ^ a b c Diggle, James, et al., eds. (2021), The Cambridge Greek Lexicon, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press