νόθος

Forms

νόθος (nóthos) m (feminine νόθη, neuter νόθον); first/second declension^[1]

Etymology

The origin is unknown.^[2][3][1] Frisk dismisses an old guess by Bezzenberger as worthless, and van Windekens assigned the word to “Pelasgian”.^[3] Beekes marks it as possibly Pre-Greek.^[2]

Ancient grammarians had their own explanation: Orion's Etymologicum (5th century AD) derived it from ὄνομαι (ónomai, “to blame”), as a man open to reproach.^[4]

Earliest recorded meaning

It is frequent in the Iliad but absent from the Odyssey: a son born out of wedlock to a known father, by a slave or a concubine, as opposed to a γνήσιος (gnḗsios) son.^[5][2][6] The Iliad also has a feminine, a bastard daughter (κούρη νόθη, Il. 13.173).^[5]

Semantic evolution

Herodotus and Plato speak of bastard children.^[5] At Athens the word had a legal sense: the child of a citizen father and a foreign mother, as in Demosthenes and Plutarch.^[5][7][8] Papyri of the 3rd century BC use it for a class of temple attendants in Egypt and for cross-bred sheep.^[5]

Plato extended it to anything spurious or counterfeit: a bastard kind of reasoning, a spurious education, false pleasures.^[5][7] Aristotle called the spleen a “bastard liver”, and the physicians spoke of the false ribs.^[5] In late Greek it marks literary works as not authentic.^[5][8]

The Letter to the Hebrews says that those who escape God's discipline are bastards and not sons.^[9][5] It passed into Latin as nothus.^[10] Modern Greek νόθος (nóthos), a learned form, means born out of wedlock, in biology hybrid, and in mathematics an improper fraction, perhaps on the English model.^[11]

Timeline

• Homer – The Iliad uses it of sons born to slaves or concubines.^[5][6]
• 5th century BC – Herodotus speaks of bastard children.^[5][12]
• 5th–4th century BC – Plato uses it figuratively for spurious reasoning and pleasures.^[5][7][12]
• 4th century BC – Demosthenes uses it for the child of an Athenian father and a foreign mother.^[5][7][12]
• 4th century BC – Aristotle calls the spleen a bastard liver.^[5][12]
• 3rd century BC – A papyrus uses it for cross-bred sheep.^[5]
• 3rd century AD – Porphyry uses it for spurious literary works.^[5][12]
• Modern Greek – The learned Modern Greek νόθος (nóthos) means illegitimate, hybrid, and improper (of a fraction).^[11]

Meanings

Adjective

1. Born out of wedlock, illegitimate, baseborn; as a noun, a bastard.^[5][7]
2. (Athens) Born of a citizen father and a foreign mother.^[5][7]
3. Of animals, cross-bred.^[5]
4. Of a sexual relationship, irregular, illicit.^[7]
5. Spurious, counterfeit, not genuine; of literary works, not authentic.^[5][7]

Word family

• νοθεία (notheía)
• νοθεύω (notheúō)

Related words

• Latin nothus

References

1. ^ a b c d e 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. ^ a b Frisk, Hjalmar (1960–1972), Griechisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3 vols, Heidelberg: Carl Winter
4. ^ Etygram: ancient etymologies of Greek words, CEPAM, Université Côte d'Azur, http://appsweb-cepam.unice.fr/etygram
5. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t Liddell, Henry George; Scott, Robert; Jones, Henry Stuart (1940), A Greek-English Lexicon, 9th ed., Oxford: Clarendon Press
6. ^ a b Cunliffe, Richard John (1924), A Lexicon of the Homeric Dialect, London: Blackie and Son
7. ^ a b c d e f g h Diggle, James, et al., eds. (2021), The Cambridge Greek Lexicon, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press
8. ^ 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
9. ^ 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. ^ Saalfeld, Günther Alexander (1874), Index Graecorum vocabulorum in linguam latinam translatorum, Berlin: Weidmann
11. ^ a b Ινστιτούτο Νεοελληνικών Σπουδών (Ίδρυμα Μανόλη Τριανταφυλλίδη) (1998), Λεξικό της κοινής νεοελληνικής, Thessaloniki: Aristotle University of Thessaloniki
12. ^ a b c d e Rodríguez Adrados, Francisco, et al., eds. (1980–), Diccionario Griego-Español, Madrid: CSIC, http://dge.cchs.csic.es/xdge