Etymologically
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μῆκος

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Pronunciation

  • 5th-century BC Attic: /mɛ̂ː.kos/[1]
  • 4th-century AD Koine: /ˈmi.kos/[1]
  • 10th-century Byzantine: /ˈmi.kos/[1]

Forms

μῆκος (mêkos) n (genitive μήκους or μήκεος); third declension[1] Doric μᾶκος.[2][3]

Etymology

It is inherited from Proto-Hellenic *mā́kos,[1] inherited from Proto-Indo-European *méh₂ḱos (“length”), an old neuter s-stem with the full grade of the root seen in μακρός (makrós, “long”), from the zero grade *mh₂ḱ-ro-.[4][1][5] Doric has μᾶκος (mâkos).[2]

Its counterpart is Avestan masah- (“length, greatness”), with a short vowel; the root is also in Latin maciēs (“leanness”), maceō (“to be lean”) and Hittite mak-l-ant- (“lean”).[4][1]

Earliest recorded meaning

The Odyssey uses it of the length of the Cyclops' club, beside πάχος (pákhos, “thickness”).[2][3]

Semantic evolution

Classical Greek uses it of length in space, of a road, a voyage or a throw, of a person's height, and of time, as the length of a life or a war.[3][2] Empedocles, Plato and Aristotle pair it with breadth and depth as the dimensions of a body, and Plato and Aristotle also use it of the length of a vowel.[2][3] In the New Testament it is length beside breadth and height.[6]

The word continued into Medieval Greek, and Modern Greek μήκος (míkos) is the learned form, meaning length.[7][8][9]

Timeline

  • Homer – The Odyssey uses it of the length of a club.[2][10]
  • 5th century BC – Herodotus uses it of the length of a road.[2][11]
  • 5th–4th century BC – Plato names length, breadth and depth together.[2][11]
  • 4th century BC – Aristotle uses ἐπὶ μῆκος for “lengthwise”.[2][11]
  • 1st century AD – The Book of Revelation names length, breadth and height together.[6]
  • Modern Greek – Modern Greek μήκος (míkos) means length.[8]

Meanings

Noun

  1. Length, in space.[2][3]
  2. Height, tallness.[2][3]
  3. Distance, of a throw, a journey or a voyage.[3][2]
  4. Length of time, duration.[3]
  5. Length of a speech; of a vowel or syllable.[3]
  6. Greatness, scale.[3]

Word family

  • μηκύνω (mēkū́nō)
  • μήκιστος (mḗkistos)
  • μακρός (makrós)
  • εὖρος (eûros)
  • ὕψος (húpsos)

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 k l Liddell, Henry George; Scott, Robert; Jones, Henry Stuart (1940), A Greek-English Lexicon, 9th ed., Oxford: Clarendon Press
  3. ^ a b c d e f g h i j Diggle, James, et al., eds. (2021), The Cambridge Greek Lexicon, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press
  4. ^ a b 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
  5. ^ Wodtko, Dagmar S.; Irslinger, Britta; Schneider, Carolin (2008), Nomina im indogermanischen Lexikon, Heidelberg: Winter
  6. ^ a b 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
  7. ^ Kriaras, Emmanuel, Επιτομή του Λεξικού της μεσαιωνικής ελληνικής δημώδους γραμματείας 1100–1669, Κέντρο Ελληνικής Γλώσσας, https://www.greek-language.gr
  8. ^ a b Ινστιτούτο Νεοελληνικών Σπουδών (Ίδρυμα Μανόλη Τριανταφυλλίδη) (1998), Λεξικό της κοινής νεοελληνικής, Thessaloniki: Aristotle University of Thessaloniki
  9. ^ Babiniotis, Georgios (2010), Ετυμολογικό λεξικό της νέας ελληνικής γλώσσας [Etymological Dictionary of Modern Greek], Athens: Κέντρο Λεξικολογίας
  10. ^ Keersmaekers, Alek (2021–2025), GLAUx: The Greek Language Automated corpus, https://github.com/alekkeersmaekers/glaux
  11. ^ a b c Rodríguez Adrados, Francisco, et al., eds. (1980–), Diccionario Griego-Español, Madrid: CSIC, http://dge.cchs.csic.es/xdge