Etymologically
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λέγω

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Pronunciation

  • 5th-century BC Attic: /lé.ɡɔː/[1]
  • 4th-century AD Koine: /ˈle.ɣo/[1]
  • 10th-century Byzantine: /ˈle.ɣo/[1]

Forms

λέγω (légō) [1]

Etymology

It is inherited from Proto-Hellenic *légō,[1] inherited from Proto-Indo-European *leǵ- (“to collect, gather”).[2][1] This thematic root present is the base of all its tenses and of the nouns made from it, and corresponds to Latin legō (“to gather, choose; to read”).[2][3] Albanian mbledh (“to collect, harvest”) is related too, and shows that the root ended in a palatal consonant.[2][3]

A root of the same meaning, *les-, is found in German lesen, Lithuanian lèsti (“to pick”) and Hittite; how it relates to *leǵ- is unclear.[2]

Earliest recorded meaning

In Homer it means to gather or pick: “let us gather the bones” (Iliad 23.239), and of Achilles choosing twelve young men (Iliad 21.27).[3][4] From this came “to count”, as in Iliad 2.125, and “to recount”: in the Odyssey Odysseus “made the many lies he told like the truth” (19.203).[3][5]

Semantic evolution

Chantraine traces the senses in the order “gather, pick, choose”, then “count, enumerate”, then “recount, tell”, from which “say” came.[3] Beekes dates “say” as the general sense after Homer, where the verb stands beside the synonymous and suppletive ἀγορεύω (agoreúō), φημί (phēmí) and εἶπον (eîpon).[2] In Attic prose the old sense “gather” lives on only in compounds such as συλλέγω (sullégō) and ἐκλέγω (eklégō).[2][3]

From the 5th century BC λέγω is the ordinary verb for speaking and saying: to speak in the Assembly or the courts, to plead a case, to state that something is so; the passive phrase τὸ λεγόμενον meant “as the saying goes”.[4] In the middle and passive it could mean “to mean”.[1] Its derivative λόγος (lógos), first “computation, account”, then “word, speech, reason”, carries the same development further.[2]

The verb lives on as Modern Greek λέγω (légo) and colloquial λέω (léo), and in compounds in -λέγω “choose”.[1]

Timeline

  • Homer – The Iliad uses it for gathering bones and picking out men, and for counting.[3][4]
  • Homer – The Odyssey uses it for telling tales.[5][4]
  • 5th century BC – Herodotus and the tragedians use it for stating that something is the case.[4][6]
  • 5th century BC – Thucydides uses τὸ λεγόμενον, “as the saying goes”.[4][6]
  • 5th–4th century BC – Aristophanes and the Attic orators use it for speaking in court and pleading a case.[4][6]
  • 5th–4th century BC – Plato uses it for choosing a number.[4][6]
  • Modern Greek – It survives as λέγω and λέω.[1]

Meanings

Verb

  1. To gather up, collect (stones, bones, firewood).[4][7]
  2. To choose, pick out.[4] (Middle) to select for oneself.[4]
  3. To count up, reckon.[4]
  4. To count among, include; to rate, reckon as.[4]
  5. To tell of, relate, recount.[4]
  6. To speak, talk.[4]
  7. To make a speech in a court or assembly; to plead a case.[4]
  8. To say, utter words.[4]
  9. To say that, declare.[4]
  10. (middle and passive) To mean.[1]

Word family

  • λόγος (lógos)
  • λέξις (léxis)
  • λογίζομαι (logízomai)
  • λογάς (logás)
  • διαλέγομαι (dialégomai)
  • ἐκλέγω (eklégō)
  • συλλέγω (sullégō)
  • ἀντιλέγω (antilégō)
  • κατάλογος (katálogos)

Usage notes

LSJ lists a separate *λέγω “to lay (to sleep)”, a present wrongly inferred from forms such as λέξομαι and ἔλεκτο, which belong to λέχομαι (lékhomai) “to lie down”.[8][7]

References

  1. ^ a b c d e f g h i j Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
  2. ^ a b c d e f g 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 d e f g 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. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r Diggle, James, et al., eds. (2021), The Cambridge Greek Lexicon, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press
  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 Rodríguez Adrados, Francisco, et al., eds. (1980–), Diccionario Griego-Español, Madrid: CSIC, http://dge.cchs.csic.es/xdge
  7. ^ a b Cunliffe, Richard John (1924), A Lexicon of the Homeric Dialect, London: Blackie and Son
  8. ^ Liddell, Henry George; Scott, Robert; Jones, Henry Stuart (1940), A Greek-English Lexicon, 9th ed., Oxford: Clarendon Press