πλακοῦς

Forms

πλᾰκοῦς (plakoûs) m (genitive πλᾰκοῦντος); third declension^[1] The uncontracted adjective is also used for the cake in a Hellenistic epigram.^[2]

Etymology

It is from Ancient Greek πλακόεις (plakóeis, “flat”), contracted and used as a noun.^[1][2][3] The adjective is formed from πλάξ (pláx, “flat surface, slab”).^[3][4] Beekes derives the noun for slab, apparently, from a root noun Proto-Indo-European *pl̥k-s, and compares Latvian plaka (“low-lying place, plain”) and Old Norse flaga (“thin layer”).^[3][5]

Ancient grammarians already explained it this way: the Etymologicum Magnum says that everything spread out flat was called by the word for a slab, whence the adjective and its Attic contraction.^[6]

Earliest recorded meaning

It is first found in Aristophanes, in the Acharnians and other plays, for a cake.^[7][2][8]

Semantic evolution

The word was common in comedy for a flat cake.^[2][8][3] Such cakes were made of fine meal, water, milk or fat, and came in many regional varieties, of which Athenaeus gives long lists.^[9][2] They were also offerings: the magical papyri tell the reader to make seven of them.^[10] Because of its shape the word also named the seed of the mallow, which children called “cheeses”.^[2][11]

Latin borrowed it as placenta (“a flat cake”);^[3][12] Etymonline and Triantafyllidis trace the Latin form to the accusative πλακόεντα, while Beekes calls the phonetic details unclear.^[13][14][3] In the 16th century the Italian anatomist Realdo Colombo named the organ attaching the fetus to the womb placenta uterina, “uterine cake”, from its shape, whence English placenta.^[13] Modern Greek πλακούντας (plakoúntas) is a learned revival: it means a sweet cake, and in anatomy the placenta, a sense taken from French.^[14][15]

Timeline

• 5th–4th century BC – Aristophanes uses it often for a flat cake.^[2][8][16]
• 2nd–3rd century AD – Athenaeus lists many kinds of cake under this name.^[2][9][16]
• 16th century – The Italian anatomist Realdo Colombo names the placenta after the Latin form of this word.^[13]
• 1690s – English uses placenta for the mammalian organ.^[13]

Meanings

Noun

1. A flat cake, often an offering.^[2][8][10]
2. The seed of the mallow.^[2][11]

Word family

• πλακούντιον (plakoúntion)

Related words

• πλάξ (pláx)
• πλακόεις (plakóeis)
• Latin placenta
• English placenta

References

1. ^ a b c d e Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f g h i j 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 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
4. ^ Liddell, Henry George; Scott, Robert (1889), An Intermediate Greek-English Lexicon, Oxford: Clarendon Press
5. ^ Frisk, Hjalmar (1960–1972), Griechisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3 vols, Heidelberg: Carl Winter
6. ^ Gaisford, Thomas, ed. (1848), Etymologicum Magnum, Oxford: Oxford University Press
7. ^ Keersmaekers, Alek (2021–2025), GLAUx: The Greek Language Automated corpus, https://github.com/alekkeersmaekers/glaux
8. ^ a b c d Diggle, James, et al., eds. (2021), The Cambridge Greek Lexicon, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press
9. ^ a b Cancik, Hubert; Schneider, Helmuth, eds. (2002–2010), Brill's New Pauly: Encyclopaedia of the Ancient World, Leiden: Brill
10. ^ a b Muñoz Delgado, Luis (2001), Léxico de magia y religión en los papiros mágicos griegos, Madrid: CSIC
11. ^ a b Hesychius of Alexandria, Lexicon, ed. Kurt Latte (Α–Ο, Copenhagen 1953–1966) and Moritz Schmidt (Π–Ω, Jena 1858–1868)
12. ^ Saalfeld, Günther Alexander (1874), Index Graecorum vocabulorum in linguam latinam translatorum, Berlin: Weidmann
13. ^ a b c d Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
14. ^ a b Ινστιτούτο Νεοελληνικών Σπουδών (Ίδρυμα Μανόλη Τριανταφυλλίδη) (1998), Λεξικό της κοινής νεοελληνικής, Thessaloniki: Aristotle University of Thessaloniki
15. ^ Babiniotis, Georgios (2010), Ετυμολογικό λεξικό της νέας ελληνικής γλώσσας [Etymological Dictionary of Modern Greek], Athens: Κέντρο Λεξικολογίας
16. ^ a b Rodríguez Adrados, Francisco, et al., eds. (1980–), Diccionario Griego-Español, Madrid: CSIC, http://dge.cchs.csic.es/xdge