Etymologically
Log in

κῆπος

This is the current revision of this entry, as edited by bogdan on 29 October 2026 at 09:57. This address is a permanent link to this version.
Changes in this edit History

Pronunciation

  • 5th-century BC Attic: /kɛ̂ː.pos/[1]
  • 4th-century AD Koine: /ˈci.pos/[1]
  • 10th-century Byzantine: /ˈci.pos/[1]

Forms

κῆπος (kêpos) m (genitive κήπου); second declension[1] Doric and Cypriot κᾶπος.[2][3]

Etymology

It is inherited from Proto-Hellenic *kā́pos,[3][1] perhaps from Proto-Indo-European *keh₂p- (“enclosure”).[3] Apart from its ending, the Proto-Greek form matches a West Germanic word for a measured piece of land, Old High German huoba, Old Saxon hōƀa, German Hufe and Dutch hoeve (“farm”), from *keh₂p-h₂-.[3][1] Albanian kopsht (“garden”), with a suffix, belongs here too.[3][1] Links with κάπετος (kápetos, “ditch”), with Latin capiō (“to seize”) or with Old High German habaro (“oats”) are uncertain or wrong, and Beekes asks whether the word could come from a European substrate language.[3]

Earliest recorded meaning

It is found from Homer on.[3][4] In the Odyssey it is a garden or orchard with many trees, such as the garden of Alcinous.[2][5][6]

Semantic evolution

Pindar uses the word of rich, fertile lands: the garden of Aphrodite is Cyrene, and the garden of Zeus is Libya.[2][5] Herodotus names the gardens of Midas in Macedonia.[2] The poets also made it the sacred grove of a god or the gardens of the Graces and the Muses, and Plato calls written texts gardens of ideas.[5] In Cypriot it meant an uncultivated piece of land.[3]

Plato mentions the "gardens of Adonis", plants grown in pots for his festival.[5] The garden of Epicurus at Athens, the seat of his school, gave the word a philosophical sense: Diogenes Laertius calls the Epicureans "those from the gardens".[7][8] The word also named a way of cutting the hair and, as early as Archilochus, the female genitals.[2][5]

The Gospels of Luke and John use it for a garden.[9][9] Coptic borrowed it as ⲕⲏⲡⲟⲥ (kēpos), first in a manuscript of about AD 875.[10] It lives on in medieval and Modern Greek as κήπος (kípos).[11][12]

Timeline

  • Homer – The Odyssey uses it for the orchard of Alcinous and other gardens.[2][6]
  • 7th century BC – Archilochus uses it of the female genitals.[5][13]
  • 6th–5th century BC – Pindar calls Cyrene the garden of Aphrodite.[2][13]
  • 3rd century AD – Diogenes Laertius calls the followers of Epicurus “those from the gardens”.[8][13]
  • About AD 875 – The Coptic borrowing first appears in a dated manuscript.[10]
  • Modern Greek – It survives as the word for a garden.[12]

Meanings

Noun

  1. A garden, orchard or plantation.[2][5][9]
  2. The plot of land around a house.[5]
  3. (poetic) A fertile region; a sacred precinct or mythical grove.[2][5]
  4. (plural) The "gardens of Adonis", plants grown in pots for his festival.[5]
  5. A fashion of cropping the hair.[2]
  6. The female genitals.[2][5]

Word family

  • κήπευμα (kḗpeuma)
  • κηπεύω (kēpeúō)
  • κηπίον (kēpíon)
  • κηπάδιον (kēpádion)
  • κηπεύς (kēpeús)
  • περίκηπος (períkēpos)

Usage notes

Beekes lists a separate word κῆπος, “ape”, and LSJ gives it as a variant reading for κῆβος (kêbos), a kind of monkey.[3][2][14]

References

  1. ^ a b c d e f g Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
  2. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l Liddell, Henry George; Scott, Robert; Jones, Henry Stuart (1940), A Greek-English Lexicon, 9th ed., Oxford: Clarendon Press
  3. ^ a b c d e f g h i 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
  4. ^ Keersmaekers, Alek (2021–2025), GLAUx: The Greek Language Automated corpus, https://github.com/alekkeersmaekers/glaux
  5. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k Diggle, James, et al., eds. (2021), The Cambridge Greek Lexicon, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press
  6. ^ a b Smith, William; Wayte, William; Marindin, G. E., eds. (1890), A Dictionary of Greek and Roman Antiquities, 3rd ed., London: John Murray
  7. ^ Cancik, Hubert; Schneider, Helmuth, eds. (2002–2010), Brill's New Pauly: Encyclopaedia of the Ancient World, Leiden: Brill
  8. ^ a b Malhadas, Daisi; Dezotti, Maria Celeste C.; Neves, Maria Helena de Moura, eds. (2006–2010), Dicionário Grego-Português, São Paulo: Ateliê; digital ed. 3 (2022), UNESP Araraquara
  9. ^ 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
  10. ^ a b Database and Dictionary of Greek Loanwords in Coptic (DDGLC), Freie Universität Berlin and Universität Leipzig
  11. ^ Kriaras, Emmanuel, Επιτομή του Λεξικού της μεσαιωνικής ελληνικής δημώδους γραμματείας 1100–1669, Κέντρο Ελληνικής Γλώσσας, https://www.greek-language.gr
  12. ^ a b Ινστιτούτο Νεοελληνικών Σπουδών (Ίδρυμα Μανόλη Τριανταφυλλίδη) (1998), Λεξικό της κοινής νεοελληνικής, Thessaloniki: Aristotle University of Thessaloniki
  13. ^ a b c Rodríguez Adrados, Francisco, et al., eds. (1980–), Diccionario Griego-Español, Madrid: CSIC, http://dge.cchs.csic.es/xdge
  14. ^ Korinthios, J. (2025), Grande Dizionario Greco Classico: Greco–Italiano, digital ed., Milan: Hoepli