κύτισος

Pronunciation

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

Forms

κῠ́τῐσος (kútisos) m or f (genitive κῠτῐ́σου); second declension^[1] Mycenaean Greek ku-te-so, read /kutesos/.^[2][3]

Etymology

Beekes considers it Pre-Greek, a foreign plant name like κέρασος (kérasos).^[4] His reasons are the alternation of /e/ and /i/ between the Mycenaean form ku-te-so and the alphabetic κύτισος, and the suffix ⟨-ισ-⟩.^[4][2] Frisk also took it to be probably a foreign word, and records Brugmann's older link with κυτίς (kutís) and κύτος (kútos).^[5] PHILOGLOSSA rates the Pre-Greek attribution as highly reliable.^[6]

Latin borrowed it as cytisus.^[7]

Earliest recorded meaning

The earliest record is Mycenaean Greek ku-te-so, an instrumental singular on the Pylos tablet Ta 707, which Chantraine and the Mycenaean dictionaries take as this word, used of the wood of the bastard ebony or laburnum.^[8][3] In alphabetic Greek it first appears in the Hippocratic writings and in the comic poets Cratinus and Eupolis, for the fodder shrub tree medick, Medicago arborea.^[9][10]

Semantic evolution

In classical Ionic and Attic the word names the tree medick.^[4][8] Aristotle mentions it in his History of Animals, and Theophrastus uses it both for the tree medick and for the bastard ebony, Laburnum.^[9] Theocritus treats it as feminine, and the CGL renders it “moon-trefoil” in him and in Callimachus.^[9][11] Dioscorides has it in the 1st century AD.^[9]

Latin took the word over as Latin cytisus.^[7] In Modern Greek κύτισος (kýtisos) names a genus of shrubs of the pea family.^[12]

Timeline

• Mycenaean period – A Pylos tablet (Ta 707) records Mycenaean Greek ku-te-so, read as this word.^[3][8]
• 5th century BC – The Hippocratic writings, Cratinus and Eupolis name the tree medick.^[9][13]
• 4th century BC – Aristotle mentions the plant in his History of Animals.^[9][10][13]
• 4th–3rd century BC – Theophrastus applies it also to the bastard ebony, and Theocritus uses it as a feminine.^[9][13]
• 1st century AD – Dioscorides mentions the plant.^[9][13]
• Modern Greek – κύτισος (kýtisos) names a genus of shrubs.^[12]

Meanings

Noun

1. Tree medick, moon trefoil, Medicago arborea, a fodder shrub.^[9][11][4]
2. Bastard ebony, laburnum, Laburnum vulgare.^[9][8]

Related words

• Latin cytisus

References

1. ^ a b c d Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b Beekes, Robert S. P. (2014), Pre-Greek: Phonology, Morphology, Lexicon, ed. Stefan Norbruis, Leiden; Boston: Brill
3. ^ a b c Микенско-русский словарь (Mycenaean–Russian dictionary)
4. ^ 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
5. ^ Frisk, Hjalmar (1960–1972), Griechisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3 vols, Heidelberg: Carl Winter
6. ^ Scarborough, Matthew (2025), PHILOGLOSSA: database of Pre-Greek and other non-Indo-European words in Ancient Greek, version 1.0
7. ^ a b Saalfeld, Günther Alexander (1874), Index Graecorum vocabulorum in linguam latinam translatorum, Berlin: Weidmann
8. ^ a b c d 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
9. ^ a b c d e f g h i j Liddell, Henry George; Scott, Robert; Jones, Henry Stuart (1940), A Greek-English Lexicon, 9th ed., Oxford: Clarendon Press
10. ^ a b Keersmaekers, Alek (2021–2025), GLAUx: The Greek Language Automated corpus, https://github.com/alekkeersmaekers/glaux
11. ^ a b Diggle, James, et al., eds. (2021), The Cambridge Greek Lexicon, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press
12. ^ a b Πάπυρος–Larousse–Britannica, Μέγα Λεξικό της Ελληνικής Γλώσσας, Athens: Πάπυρος
13. ^ a b c d Rodríguez Adrados, Francisco, et al., eds. (1980–), Diccionario Griego-Español, Madrid: CSIC, http://dge.cchs.csic.es/xdge