Etymologically
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οὖρον

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Pronunciation

  • 5th-century BC Attic: /ûː.ron/[1]
  • 4th-century AD Koine: /ˈu.ron/[1]
  • 10th-century Byzantine: /ˈu.ron/[1]

Forms

οὖρον (oûron) n (genitive οὔρου); second declension[1]

Etymology

It is a back-formation from Ancient Greek οὐρέω (ouréō, “to urinate”).[2][3][1] That verb is an iterative *ϝορσέω (*worséō) built on the root of Sanskrit वर्षति (várṣati, “it rains”), from Proto-Indo-European *h₁wers- (“to rain”);[2][3][4][1] the cluster /rs/ lost its /s/ with lengthening of the vowel before it.[2] It was a euphemism that replaced the older ὀμείχω (omeíkhō), and it is distantly related to ἕρση (hérsē) “dew” and perhaps οὐρανός (ouranós) “sky”.[2][3][4]

LSJ compares Latin ūrīna and Sanskrit वारि (vā́ri, “water”),[5] but Beekes and Wiktionary reject the link with the Latin word, which goes back to a different root.[2][1]

Earliest recorded meaning

Its first use for urine is in Herodotus.[5][6][3]

Semantic evolution

It was the ordinary word in Hippocratic medicine, often in the plural, and Theophrastus used it too.[5][3] From it and the verb came οὐράνη (ouránē) “chamber pot”, in fragments of Aeschylus and Sophocles, and medical words such as δυσουρία (dusouría) “painful urination”.[2][3][4]

Medieval vernacular Greek kept the word, and it is still used, mostly in the plural (Modern ούρα (oúra)).[7]

Timeline

  • 5th century BC – Herodotus uses it for urine.[5][6][8]
  • 5th century BC – The Hippocratic writers use the plural in medicine.[5][8]
  • 4th–3rd century BC – Theophrastus uses it in his treatise on odours.[5][8]
  • Medieval Greek – The vernacular keeps the word.[7]

Meanings

Noun

  1. Urine.[5][6]
  • οὐρέω (ouréō)
  • οὐρήθρα (ourḗthrā)
  • δυσουρία (dusouría)

Usage notes

A separate Homeric word οὖρον (oûron) (LSJ οὖρον B), mostly in the plural, is a measure of distance: the “range” of mules ploughing a field or of a thrown discus, and later, in Apollonius of Rhodes, boundaries.[5][6] Its origin is uncertain, and Wackernagel took it for a collective plural of οὖρος (oûros) “boundary”.[2][3]

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 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 Frisk, Hjalmar (1960–1972), Griechisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3 vols, Heidelberg: Carl Winter
  4. ^ a b c 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
  5. ^ a b c d e f g h Liddell, Henry George; Scott, Robert; Jones, Henry Stuart (1940), A Greek-English Lexicon, 9th ed., Oxford: Clarendon Press
  6. ^ a b c d Diggle, James, et al., eds. (2021), The Cambridge Greek Lexicon, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press
  7. ^ a b Kriaras, Emmanuel, Επιτομή του Λεξικού της μεσαιωνικής ελληνικής δημώδους γραμματείας 1100–1669, Κέντρο Ελληνικής Γλώσσας, https://www.greek-language.gr
  8. ^ a b c Rodríguez Adrados, Francisco, et al., eds. (1980–), Diccionario Griego-Español, Madrid: CSIC, http://dge.cchs.csic.es/xdge