οἶκόνδε

Forms

οἶκόνδε (oîkónde) ^[1] Mycenaean Greek wo-i-ko-de and Mycenaean Greek wo-ko-de, read woikon-de.^[2][3] The grammarian Apollonius Dyscolus preferred to write it as two words, οἶκον δέ.^[4][5]

Etymology

It is the accusative of οἶκος (oîkos, “house”) with the directional postposition -δε (-de, “towards”).^[1][6][7] The noun was ⟨ϝοῖκος⟩ in dialects that kept the digamma, from Proto-Hellenic *wóikos and Proto-Indo-European *wóyḱos (“settlement”).^[2][1] The postposition, which governs an accusative of direction, is a deictic particle that Beekes compares with Old Church Slavonic до (do, “towards”) and Old English tō (“to”).^[2]

Cognate with Latin vīcus (“village”) and Sanskrit वेश (veśá, “house”), which continue the same noun.^[2][1]

Earliest recorded meaning

The Mycenaean tablets already have the form, meaning “homeward”.^[2][3] In Homer it means home, homeward, to one's house or homeland: at the end of the first book of the Iliad the gods each go home to sleep.^[6][4]

Semantic evolution

It is an epic word: Homer uses it often, also of bringing a bride home and, in the Odyssey, of going to one's own quarters in the house, as when Penelope returns to her room.^[6][4][8] Hesiod and later epic poets such as Apollonius of Rhodes keep it, but the corpus has only a few dozen examples in all.^[8][9] Prose and later Greek use οἴκαδε (oíkade) instead, with which the lexica equate it.^[4][10]

Timeline

• Mycenaean period – The Linear B tablets write Mycenaean Greek wo-i-ko-de, “homeward”.^[2][3]
• Homer – The Iliad and the Odyssey use it of going home and of going to one's room.^[6][4]
• Before the 6th century BC – Hesiod uses it in the Works and Days.^[4][9][11]
• 3rd century BC – Apollonius of Rhodes uses it in the Argonautica.^[8][9][11]
• 2nd century AD – Apollonius Dyscolus discusses whether to write it as one word or two.^[4][5][11]

Meanings

Adverb

1. To one's house or homeland, homeward, home; with “lead”, of bringing home a bride.^[4][8][6]
2. To one's own room or quarters in the house, to the women's apartments.^[4][8][12]

Related words

• οἴκαδε (oíkade)
• οἴκοι (oíkoi)

References

1. ^ a b c d e f g Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f 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 Charbonnet, André (2025), Chæréphon, v4.7: supplement to Bailly from papyri, inscriptions and recent lexica
4. ^ a b c d e f g h i Liddell, Henry George; Scott, Robert; Jones, Henry Stuart (1940), A Greek-English Lexicon, 9th ed., Oxford: Clarendon Press
5. ^ a b Βικιλεξικό, the Greek Wiktionary, https://el.wiktionary.org
6. ^ a b c d e Cunliffe, Richard John (1924), A Lexicon of the Homeric Dialect, London: Blackie and Son
7. ^ Bailly, Anatole (2020), Dictionnaire grec-français, Bailly 2020 Hugo Chávez ed., ed. Gérard Gréco et al.
8. ^ a b c d e Diggle, James, et al., eds. (2021), The Cambridge Greek Lexicon, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press
9. ^ a b c Keersmaekers, Alek (2021–2025), GLAUx: The Greek Language Automated corpus, https://github.com/alekkeersmaekers/glaux
10. ^ Liddell, Henry George; Scott, Robert (1889), An Intermediate Greek-English Lexicon, Oxford: Clarendon Press
11. ^ a b c Rodríguez Adrados, Francisco, et al., eds. (1980–), Diccionario Griego-Español, Madrid: CSIC, http://dge.cchs.csic.es/xdge
12. ^ Autenrieth, Georg (1891), A Homeric Dictionary for Schools and Colleges, tr. Robert P. Keep, New York: Harper and Brothers