Etymologically
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κῶλον

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Pronunciation

  • 5th-century BC Attic: /kɔ̂ː.lon/[1]
  • 4th-century AD Koine: /ˈko.lon/[1]
  • 10th-century Byzantine: /ˈko.lon/[1]

Forms

κῶλον (kôlon) n (genitive κώλου); second declension[1]

Etymology

The origin is uncertain.[2][3] Beekes finds no obvious cognates and asks whether it is Pre-Greek.[2] The words for “knee” in Balto-Slavic, such as Lithuanian kelỹs, are often compared, but Beekes thinks the Greek vowel rules them out.[2][3] Wiktionary and Köbler give the traditional derivation from Proto-Indo-European *(s)kel- (“to bend”), and Babiniotis links it with σκέλος (skélos, “leg”), which Beekes considers unrelated.[1][4][5][2] Specht's comparison with the Hesychian gloss κόλσασθαι (kólsasthai, “to supplicate”) rests on a form whose authenticity Chantraine doubts.[3][2]

Earliest recorded meaning

It is first found in Aeschylus, meaning a limb, especially a leg.[6][7]

Semantic evolution

The tragedians use it for the limbs of people and animals, and Aeschylus also for a sacrificial thigh and for each leg of the double race-course.[6][8] Herodotus and Plato use it for a side of a building, and later writers for the upright of a ladder.[6][8] In rhetoric, from Aristotle on, it is a member or clause of a period, and in metrics a short metrical unit.[6][8] In the Septuagint and the New Testament the plural means corpses, bodies left unburied in the desert.[9][10]

It was borrowed into Latin as colon, a part of a verse, the source of English colon as a punctuation mark.[11][12] The word for the large intestine, κόλον, is a separate word, though late writers confused the two.[6][5][12] Modern Greek κώλον (kólon) is a learned word.[13]

Timeline

  • 6th–5th century BC – Aeschylus uses it for limbs and for each leg of the double course.[6][8][14]
  • 5th century BC – Herodotus uses it for the side of a building.[6][14]
  • 4th century BC – Aristotle uses it for a clause of a period.[6][8][14]
  • 1st century BC – Dionysius of Halicarnassus uses it for an element of a strophe.[6][14]
  • 1st century AD – The New Testament uses the plural for corpses.[9]
  • 1540s – English borrows colon, through Latin, for a punctuation mark.[12]

Meanings

Noun

  1. A limb of the body, especially a leg; of animals, the fore or hind legs.[6][8]
  2. The thigh of a sacrificial animal.[6][8]
  3. Each leg of the double race-course.[6][8]
  4. The side or front of a building; the upright of a ladder.[6][8]
  5. (rhetoric) A member or clause of a period.[6][8]
  6. (metrics) A short metrical unit; an element of a strophe.[6]
  7. (Septuagint, New Testament, in the plural) Dead bodies, corpses.[9][10]

Word family

  • ἀκροκώλιον (akrokṓlion)
  • Latin colon
  • English colon

References

  1. ^ a b c d e Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
  2. ^ a b c d e 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 c 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
  4. ^ Köbler, Gerhard, Griechisch-deutsches Wörterbuch, online ed., https://www.koeblergerhard.de
  5. ^ a b Babiniotis, Georgios (2010), Ετυμολογικό λεξικό της νέας ελληνικής γλώσσας [Etymological Dictionary of Modern Greek], Athens: Κέντρο Λεξικολογίας
  6. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o Liddell, Henry George; Scott, Robert; Jones, Henry Stuart (1940), A Greek-English Lexicon, 9th ed., Oxford: Clarendon Press
  7. ^ Keersmaekers, Alek (2021–2025), GLAUx: The Greek Language Automated corpus, https://github.com/alekkeersmaekers/glaux
  8. ^ a b c d e f g h i j Diggle, James, et al., eds. (2021), The Cambridge Greek Lexicon, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press
  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 Lust, Johan; Eynikel, Erik; Hauspie, Katrin (2003), Greek-English Lexicon of the Septuagint, rev. ed., Stuttgart: Deutsche Bibelgesellschaft
  11. ^ Saalfeld, Günther Alexander (1874), Index Graecorum vocabulorum in linguam latinam translatorum, Berlin: Weidmann
  12. ^ a b c Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
  13. ^ Ινστιτούτο Νεοελληνικών Σπουδών (Ίδρυμα Μανόλη Τριανταφυλλίδη) (1998), Λεξικό της κοινής νεοελληνικής, Thessaloniki: Aristotle University of Thessaloniki
  14. ^ a b c d Rodríguez Adrados, Francisco, et al., eds. (1980–), Diccionario Griego-Español, Madrid: CSIC, http://dge.cchs.csic.es/xdge