Etymologically
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κῦδος

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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]
  • 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