κῦδος

Pronunciation

• IPA (5th-century BC Attic): /kŷː.dos/^[1]
• IPA (4th-century AD Koine): /ˈcy.ðos/^[1]
• IPA (10th-century Byzantine): /ˈcy.ðos/^[1]

Forms

κῦδος (kûdos) n (genitive κῡ́δους or κῡ́δεος); third declension^[1]

Etymology

It is probably inherited from Proto-Indo-European *kewd-s- (“miraculous power”), as Beekes reconstructs it, comparing Proto-Slavic *čudo (“wonder, miracle”), whose relatives in Old Russian have overtones of sorcery.^[2][1] The Greek word names the radiant power of the gods, or the power they confer, as Benveniste put it.^[2] Greek ⟨ῡ⟩ in κῦδος replaced the full grade ⟨*eu⟩ of the root.^[2]

Frisk, after older scholars, linked the Slavic word with a verb for “to hear, perceive”, Old Church Slavonic чоути (čuti), and so explained κῦδος as “what is heard of”, like κλέος (kléos).^[3] Wiktionary similarly connects it with Proto-Indo-European *(s)kewh₁- (“to perceive”) and κοέω (koéō).^[3][1][4] Beekes rejects this, as that root has no final d.^[2]

Earliest recorded meaning

In the Iliad it is first the outward splendour of a god, in the phrase “exulting in his glory”, and then the glory of victory that a god gives to one side in battle.^[5][6][7]

Semantic evolution

In Homer κῦδος is the glory of warriors and kings, often given by Zeus, and the triumph of victory; a person can be the glory of a people, as Odysseus and Nestor are “the great glory of the Achaeans”.^[5][7][6] It remained a poetic word, found in lyric, in Herodotus and in Aeschylus, but not in Sophocles, Euripides or Attic prose.^[7] Aristophanes uses it only in a mock-epic line.^[7][6]

English kudos was taken from it in 1799, probably in university slang; the back-formation kudo is from the 1930s.^[4]

Timeline

• Homer – The Iliad uses it for the splendour of gods and the glory of victory.^[5][7]
• Before the 6th century BC – Hesiod uses it for glory.^[6]
• 6th–5th century BC – Pindar and Aeschylus use it in lyric.^[7]
• 5th century BC – Herodotus has it in a speech of Xerxes.^[7]
• 1799 – English borrows it as kudos.^[4]

Meanings

Noun

1. The splendour of a god.^[5][6]
2. glory, renown, especially in war.^[7][6]
3. The glory of victory, triumph.^[5]
4. A source of glory, or (of a person) the pride of a people.^[6][5]

Related words

• κυδρός (kudrós)
• κυδαίνω (kudaínō)
• English kudos

References

1. ^ a b c d e f 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 Frisk, Hjalmar (1960–1972), Griechisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3 vols, Heidelberg: Carl Winter
4. ^ a b c Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
5. ^ a b c d e f Cunliffe, Richard John (1924), A Lexicon of the Homeric Dialect, London: Blackie and Son
6. ^ a b c d e f g Diggle, James, et al., eds. (2021), The Cambridge Greek Lexicon, Cambridge: Cambridge 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