μανδραγόρας

Pronunciation

• IPA (5th-century BC Attic): /man.dra.ɡó.raːs/^[1]
• IPA (4th-century AD Koine): /man.draˈɣo.ras/^[1]
• IPA (10th-century Byzantine): /man.draˈɣo.ras/^[1]

Forms

μᾰνδρᾰγόρᾱς (mandragórās) m (genitive μᾰνδρᾰγόρου); first declension^[1]

Etymology

The origin is unexplained.^[2][3] E. Fraenkel suspected that the plant was named after a person, perhaps a physician.^[2][3] Following Lagarde, Schrader and Nehring hesitantly compared the Persian name of the plant, meaning “plant of humans”; the root was called “man-shaped” by a Greek writer and “half-man” by Columella.^[2][3] It may be a foreign word reshaped by folk etymology.^[2][1] The CGL calls it perhaps a loanword.^[4]

Earliest recorded meaning

Plato, Xenophon and Demosthenes mention it as a plant from which a sleep-inducing drug was made.^[4][2]

Semantic evolution

Theophrastus describes the plant.^[2][3] It was thought to be an aphrodisiac: Hesychius records Μανδραγορῖτις as a name of Aphrodite, Dioscorides speaks of mandrake wine, and Alexis wrote a comedy called “The Woman Drugged with Mandrake”.^[2][3] In the Septuagint the mandrakes are the plants that Rachel obtains from Leah in Genesis.^[5]

It was borrowed into Latin as mandragorās, into Syriac, Armenian, Georgian and Old Church Slavonic, and became the source of English mandrake.^[1][2] Modern Greek μανδραγόρας (mandragóras) is a learned word for the plant, known for its narcotic properties and its man-shaped root.^[6]

Timeline

• 5th–4th century BC – Plato and Xenophon mention it as a drug that causes sleep.^[4]
• 4th century BC – Demosthenes mentions it.^[4]
• 4th–3rd century BC – Theophrastus describes the plant.^[2]
• 3rd–1st century BC – The Septuagint uses it for the mandrakes of Genesis.^[5]
• 1st century AD – Dioscorides mentions mandrake wine.^[2][3]

Meanings

Noun

1. The mandrake, Mandragora officinarum, a plant used to make a soporific drug.^[4][1]

Related words

• Latin mandragoras
• English mandrake

References

1. ^ a b c d e f g Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f g h i j 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 Frisk, Hjalmar (1960–1972), Griechisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3 vols, Heidelberg: Carl Winter
4. ^ a b c d e Diggle, James, et al., eds. (2021), The Cambridge Greek Lexicon, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press
5. ^ a b Lust, Johan; Eynikel, Erik; Hauspie, Katrin (2003), Greek-English Lexicon of the Septuagint, rev. ed., Stuttgart: Deutsche Bibelgesellschaft
6. ^ Ινστιτούτο Νεοελληνικών Σπουδών (Ίδρυμα Μανόλη Τριανταφυλλίδη) (1998), Λεξικό της κοινής νεοελληνικής, Thessaloniki: Aristotle University of Thessaloniki