κῶνος

Forms

κῶνος (kônos) m or f (genitive κώνου); second declension^[1]

Etymology

Beekes considers it Pre-Greek, from Pre-Greek, following Schwyzer, who thought of a foreign origin, and Furnée, who adduced variant forms, above all ἀκόνιτον (akóniton) “aconite”, with a prothetic vowel and the variation of /ō/ and /o/.^[2][3][1] PHILOGLOSSA rates this view as very reliable.^[4]

The traditional etymology, since Bopp, identifies it with Sanskrit शाण (śāṇa, “whetstone”), from a root for sharpening, Proto-Indo-European *ḱeh₃-, also seen in Latin cōs (“whetstone”) and Latin catus (“sharp, clever”); the Sanskrit ṇ is unexpected, and Chantraine and Frisk share Schwyzer's doubts.^[5][6][1]

Earliest recorded meaning

Democritus already uses it for a cone, and the Pseudo-Herodotean Life of Homer for the pine cone.^[7]

Semantic evolution

The original sense was the fruit of the pine, the pine cone, and also the edible seed of the stone pine; in the feminine it could name the pine tree itself.^[7][6] From the likeness of shape it became the geometric cone in Aristotle and the mathematicians, who named the conic sections after it, and also the conical shadow of the earth, the cone of vision in Galen, the peak of a helmet and a spinning top.^[7][6] The verb κωνάω (kōnáō) meant both “to spin” and “to coat with pine resin”.^[6][2]

It was borrowed as Latin cōnus.^[8] The Modern Greek κώνος (kónos) is a learned word, the cone in geometry and in technical terms, partly after French cône and English cone.^[9][10]

Timeline

• 5th century BC – Democritus uses it for a cone.^[7][11]
• 4th century BC – Aristotle uses it for the geometric cone.^[7][12][11]
• 4th–3rd century BC – Theophrastus and Theocritus use it for the pine cone.^[7][13][11]
• 2nd century BC – A papyrus uses it for an iron pole around which grain was heaped.^[7]
• 2nd century AD – Galen speaks of the cone of vision.^[7][11]
• Modern Greek – It survives as the learned word κώνος, “cone”.^[9]

Meanings

Noun

1. (masculine) The pine cone.^[7][13]
2. The edible seed of the stone pine, a pine nut.^[7]
3. (feminine) A pine tree.^[7]
4. (geometry) A cone; also the conical shadow of the earth, and the cone of vision.^[7]
5. The cone or peak of a helmet.^[7]
6. A spinning top.^[7][2]
7. An iron pole around which grain was heaped in a cone.^[7]

Word family

• κωνάριον (kōnárion)
• κωνάω (kōnáō)
• κωνικός (kōnikós)
• κωνοφόρος (kōnophóros)

Related words

• Latin cōnus
• English cone

References

1. ^ a b c d e f Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c 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. ^ Beekes, Robert S. P. (2014), Pre-Greek: Phonology, Morphology, Lexicon, ed. Stefan Norbruis, Leiden; Boston: Brill
4. ^ Scarborough, Matthew (2025), PHILOGLOSSA: database of Pre-Greek and other non-Indo-European words in Ancient Greek, version 1.0
5. ^ Frisk, Hjalmar (1960–1972), Griechisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3 vols, Heidelberg: Carl Winter
6. ^ 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
7. ^ 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
8. ^ Saalfeld, Günther Alexander (1874), Index Graecorum vocabulorum in linguam latinam translatorum, Berlin: Weidmann
9. ^ a b Ινστιτούτο Νεοελληνικών Σπουδών (Ίδρυμα Μανόλη Τριανταφυλλίδη) (1998), Λεξικό της κοινής νεοελληνικής, Thessaloniki: Aristotle University of Thessaloniki
10. ^ Babiniotis, Georgios (2010), Ετυμολογικό λεξικό της νέας ελληνικής γλώσσας [Etymological Dictionary of Modern Greek], Athens: Κέντρο Λεξικολογίας
11. ^ a b c d Rodríguez Adrados, Francisco, et al., eds. (1980–), Diccionario Griego-Español, Madrid: CSIC, http://dge.cchs.csic.es/xdge
12. ^ Keersmaekers, Alek (2021–2025), GLAUx: The Greek Language Automated corpus, https://github.com/alekkeersmaekers/glaux
13. ^ a b Diggle, James, et al., eds. (2021), The Cambridge Greek Lexicon, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press