Etymologically
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πάτος

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Pronunciation

  • 5th-century BC Attic: /pá.tos/[1]
  • 4th-century AD Koine: /ˈpa.tos/[1]
  • 10th-century Byzantine: /ˈpa.tos/[1]

Forms

πᾰ́τος (pátos) m (genitive πᾰ́του); second declension[1]

Etymology

The origin is uncertain; the word is clearly related to πατέω (patéō, “to tread”), but it is not clear which was formed from which.[1][2] Frisk regarded πάτος “path” as a possible old variant of πόντος (póntos, “sea”), with the verb as its derivative.[2][3] On that view they are inherited from Proto-Indo-European *pent- (“to go, walk; way”), the source of Sanskrit पन्था (pánthā, “path”) and Proto-Germanic *paþaz (“path”).[1] Chantraine doubts the link with the word for sea, because πάτος always means a beaten, frequented track, far from the original sense of that family; if it is rejected, neither the noun nor the verb has an etymology.[3][2] Beekes adds that “way” would not easily yield “to tread”, a word for the movement of the legs.[2]

The compounds περίπατος (perípatos) and ἀπόπατος (apópatos) are back-formations from compound verbs such as ἀποπατέω (apopatéō), and Babiniotis suggests that πάτος itself may be one, from the simple verb.[3][4]

Earliest recorded meaning

In Homer it is a beaten path and, more widely, the haunts or comings and goings of men: Bellerophon wanders shunning “the path of men”, and in the Odyssey no tread of men disturbs the wild goats of an island.[5][6][7]

Semantic evolution

The word stayed poetic: Apollonius of Rhodes still speaks of whatever lay “outside the path of men”.[6] Lucian uses it figuratively of words “off the beaten track”, that is, outlandish.[6] A papyrus of the 5th century AD uses it for the floor of a bath.[6] Hesychius glosses it as a trodden public road.[8]

The sense “bottom” of Modern Greek πάτος (pátos), the bottom of the sea, a well or a vessel, is medieval.[9] Medieval Greek also had an unrelated πάτος “agreement”, from Venetian pato.[10]

Timeline

  • Homer – The Iliad and the Odyssey use it for a beaten track and the haunts of men.[5][6][11]
  • 3rd century BC – Apollonius of Rhodes uses it of the path of men.[6][12]
  • 2nd century AD – Lucian calls outlandish words “outside the path”.[6][12]
  • 5th century AD – A papyrus uses it for the floor of a bath.[6]
  • Modern Greek – Modern Greek πάτος (pátos) means “bottom”, a sense first found in Medieval Greek.[9]

Meanings

Noun

  1. A trodden or beaten path, a track.[6][5]
  2. The haunts, the coming and going of men.[5]
  3. (figurative, in the phrase “outside the path”) Out of the way, outlandish.[6]
  4. (Byzantine) A floor.[6]

Word family

  • ἀπόπατος (apópatos)
  • πατέω (patéō)
  • πόντος (póntos)
  • περίπατος (perípatos)

Usage notes

Hesychius also glosses πάτος as “garment of Hera”, a neuter noun used by Callimachus; it has been connected with the root of “to spin” or explained as a back-formation from πατέω, a robe trailing to the feet, and Beekes finds neither convincing.[8][2][3][13] A separate πάτος “nourishment” is referred by Beekes and Chantraine to πατέομαι (patéomai, “to eat, partake of”).[2][3]

References

  1. ^ a b c d e f 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 d e 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
  4. ^ Babiniotis, Georgios (2010), Ετυμολογικό λεξικό της νέας ελληνικής γλώσσας [Etymological Dictionary of Modern Greek], Athens: Κέντρο Λεξικολογίας
  5. ^ a b c d Cunliffe, Richard John (1924), A Lexicon of the Homeric Dialect, London: Blackie and Son
  6. ^ 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
  7. ^ Diggle, James, et al., eds. (2021), The Cambridge Greek Lexicon, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press
  8. ^ a b Hesychius of Alexandria, Lexicon, ed. Kurt Latte (Α–Ο, Copenhagen 1953–1966) and Moritz Schmidt (Π–Ω, Jena 1858–1868)
  9. ^ a b Ινστιτούτο Νεοελληνικών Σπουδών (Ίδρυμα Μανόλη Τριανταφυλλίδη) (1998), Λεξικό της κοινής νεοελληνικής, Thessaloniki: Aristotle University of Thessaloniki
  10. ^ Kriaras, Emmanuel, Επιτομή του Λεξικού της μεσαιωνικής ελληνικής δημώδους γραμματείας 1100–1669, Κέντρο Ελληνικής Γλώσσας, https://www.greek-language.gr
  11. ^ Keersmaekers, Alek (2021–2025), GLAUx: The Greek Language Automated corpus, https://github.com/alekkeersmaekers/glaux
  12. ^ a b Rodríguez Adrados, Francisco, et al., eds. (1980–), Diccionario Griego-Español, Madrid: CSIC, http://dge.cchs.csic.es/xdge
  13. ^ Frisk, Hjalmar (1960–1972), Griechisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3 vols, Heidelberg: Carl Winter