Etymologically
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μαστός

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Pronunciation

  • 5th-century BC Attic: /mas.tós/[1]
  • 4th-century AD Koine: /masˈtos/[1]
  • 10th-century Byzantine: /masˈtos/[1]

Forms

μᾰστός (mastós) m (genitive μᾰστοῦ); second declension[1] Epic, Ionic and poetic μαζός, Doric μασδός (Theocritus), Hellenistic μασθός.[2][3]

Etymology

Beekes considers it Pre-Greek: the forms μαζός (mazós) (pronounced with [zd]), μαστός and Hellenistic μασθός (masthós) differ only in voicing and aspiration, which were not distinctive in Pre-Greek, so that all may go back to one Pre-Greek word.[2][4] Earlier attempts to derive them from three Indo-European forms, *mad-do-, *mad-to- and *mad-dho- (Schrader), assume suffixes that hardly existed and ignore the familiar character of the word.[2][5] Chantraine and Frisk explain the late form with ⟨σθ⟩ as remodelled on other body-part words such as στῆθος (stêthos) and κύσθος (kústhos).[6][5]

Chantraine thinks a link with μαδάω (madáō, “to be moist”) possible, thinking of the breast of a mother or nurse, and Wiktionary traces that verb to Proto-Indo-European *meh₂d-,[6][1] but Beekes finds the connection meaningless.[2] Philoxenus derived it from a verb “to seek”, as what children seek.[7]

Earliest recorded meaning

In the Iliad, in the form μαζός (mazós), it is used of a man's breast where a spear strikes, and of a woman's: Hecuba holds up her breast to plead with Hector.[3]

Semantic evolution

Herodotus uses it of women's breasts, and the tragedians of a mother suckling her child.[3] Euripides uses it, rarely, for an animal's udder.[3] By metaphor it named a breast-shaped hill or height, and also a kind of cup, in Apollodorus of Cyrene and in inscriptions of Oropos and Delos.[2]

The Septuagint uses it for women's breasts, also metaphorically, and has “those drawn from the breast” for weaned children.[8] In the New Testament the late form μασθός (masthós) is the most frequent spelling in the manuscripts.[9] Medieval vernacular Greek kept the word,[10] and Modern Greek μαστός (mastós) is a learned continuation of it.[11]

Timeline

  • Homer – The Iliad uses it for a man's and a woman's breast.[3][12]
  • 6th–5th century BC – Aeschylus uses it of a mother giving her breast to her child.[3][13]
  • 5th century BC – Herodotus uses the Ionic form for women's breasts.[3][13]
  • 5th century BC – Euripides uses it for an animal's udder.[3][13]
  • 1st century AD – The New Testament has it, mostly in the spelling μασθός.[9][12]
  • Modern Greek – The learned Modern Greek μαστός (mastós) continues it.[11]

Meanings

Noun

  1. The breast, of a man or a woman; the nipple.[3][2][9]
  2. (rare) The udder of an animal.[3]
  3. (figurative) A breast-shaped hill or height.[2]
  4. A kind of drinking cup.[2]

Word family

  • μαστοειδής (mastoeidḗs)
  • φιλόμαστος (philómastos)
  • μαστάριον (mastárion)
  • μαστίον (mastíon)
  • μαστόδετον (mastódeton)
  • μαστώδης (mastṓdēs)
  • πρόμαστος (prómastos)
  • μαζός (mazós)

Usage notes

Grammarians stated that μαζός is a man's breast and μαστός a woman's, but usage contradicts this.[3]

References

  1. ^ a b c d e Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
  2. ^ a b c d e f g h 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 h i j k Liddell, Henry George; Scott, Robert; Jones, Henry Stuart (1940), A Greek-English Lexicon, 9th ed., Oxford: Clarendon Press
  4. ^ Beekes, Robert S. P. (2014), Pre-Greek: Phonology, Morphology, Lexicon, ed. Stefan Norbruis, Leiden; Boston: Brill
  5. ^ a b Frisk, Hjalmar (1960–1972), Griechisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3 vols, Heidelberg: Carl Winter
  6. ^ a b 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. ^ Etygram: ancient etymologies of Greek words, CEPAM, Université Côte d'Azur, http://appsweb-cepam.unice.fr/etygram
  8. ^ Lust, Johan; Eynikel, Erik; Hauspie, Katrin (2003), Greek-English Lexicon of the Septuagint, rev. ed., Stuttgart: Deutsche Bibelgesellschaft
  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. ^ Kriaras, Emmanuel, Επιτομή του Λεξικού της μεσαιωνικής ελληνικής δημώδους γραμματείας 1100–1669, Κέντρο Ελληνικής Γλώσσας, https://www.greek-language.gr
  11. ^ a b Ινστιτούτο Νεοελληνικών Σπουδών (Ίδρυμα Μανόλη Τριανταφυλλίδη) (1998), Λεξικό της κοινής νεοελληνικής, Thessaloniki: Aristotle University of Thessaloniki
  12. ^ a b Keersmaekers, Alek (2021–2025), GLAUx: The Greek Language Automated corpus, https://github.com/alekkeersmaekers/glaux
  13. ^ a b c Rodríguez Adrados, Francisco, et al., eds. (1980–), Diccionario Griego-Español, Madrid: CSIC, http://dge.cchs.csic.es/xdge