Etymologically
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πνεύμων

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Pronunciation

  • 5th-century BC Attic: /pněu̯.mɔːn/[1]
  • 4th-century AD Koine: /ˈpneβ.mon/[1]
  • 10th-century Byzantine: /ˈpnev.mon/[1]

Forms

πνεύμων (pneúmōn) m (genitive πνεύμονος); third declension[1]

Etymology

It is from Ancient Greek πλεύμων (pleúmōn, “lung”), the older and originally Attic form, reshaped after πνέω (pnéō, “to breathe, blow”) and πνεῦμα (pneûma, “breath”).[2][3][4][1] The manuscripts mostly have the spelling with ⟨ν⟩, but the best manuscripts of Aeschylus and Sophocles and a 4th-century BC inscription from Epidaurus have the one with ⟨λ⟩, and LSJ and Chantraine take the change to follow a derivation from the word for breath that Aristotle suggested.[5][4]

The older form goes back to Proto-Hellenic *pléwmōn, from Proto-Indo-European *pléwmō, formed on the root *pleu- of πλέω (pléō, “to sail, float”): the lung is the “floater”, which stays on the surface when the organs of a slaughtered animal are thrown into water.[1][3][4] Beekes calls the link with that verb only possible.[2] Cognate with Sanskrit क्लोमन् (klóman, “right lung”), with /p/ dissimilated to /k/ before /m/, and Latin pulmō (“lung”), from a zero-grade form, though each correspondence has minor irregularities.[2][4][3] Balto-Slavic has a different formation from the same root: Lithuanian plaũčiai (“lungs”) and Old Church Slavonic плюща (pljušta).[2][3]

Earliest recorded meaning

In the Iliad a bronze spear point sticks fast in a lung (4.528).[6][5]

Semantic evolution

It is mostly plural, “the lungs”, from Archilochus and Alcaeus on, and the lungs count as the most vital part, and even as the seat of love in a fragment of Sophocles.[5][2] Plato's Timaeus calls the lung the steward of the breath.[5] In medicine it gave περιπλευμονία (peripleumoníā, “pneumonia”), used by the Ionic and Attic writers.[2][4] Plato and Aristotle also use it for the jellyfish, and Epicurus called his rival Nausiphanes a “jellyfish”.[5][2]

Coptic borrowed the word, recorded from about AD 350.[7] Medieval vernacular Greek has it as πνεύμων, with the forms πλέμων and φλέγμων (after φλέγμα), also for an inflammation of the lungs.[8] Modern Greek uses the learned πνεύμονας (pnévmonas), while dialect πλεμόνι continues the form with ⟨λ⟩.[9][8] English pneumo-, “lung”, is taken from it.[10]

Timeline

  • Homer – The Iliad uses it for the lung of a wounded warrior.[6][5]
  • 7th century BC – Archilochus uses the plural for the lungs.[5][11]
  • 5th century BC – Sophocles makes the lungs the seat of love, and the Hippocratic writers use the word in medicine.[5][12][11]
  • 5th–4th century BC – Plato calls the lung the steward of the breath and uses the word for the jellyfish.[5][11]
  • 4th century BC – Aristotle connects the lung with breath, the derivation that the spelling with ⟨ν⟩ follows.[5][4][11]
  • About AD 350 – A Sahidic Coptic text has the borrowed word.[7]
  • 12th–17th century – Vernacular texts use it also for an inflammation of the lungs.[8]
  • Modern Greek – It survives as the learned πνεύμονας (pnévmonas).[9]

Meanings

Noun

  1. The lung; usually in the plural, the lungs.[5][13][2]
  2. A jellyfish, sea-lung.[5][2][13]
  3. (Byzantine) Inflammation of the lungs.[8]

Word family

  • πλευμονία (pleumoníā)
  • περιπλευμονία (peripleumoníā)
  • πλευμονώδης (pleumonṓdēs)
  • πνευμόνιον (pneumónion)

Usage notes

Ancient grammarians, Moeris, Photius and Eustathius among them, recognised the form with ⟨λ⟩ as both the Homeric and the true Attic one.[5]

References

  1. ^ a b c d e f Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
  2. ^ a b c d e f g h i 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 Frisk, Hjalmar (1960–1972), Griechisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3 vols, Heidelberg: Carl Winter
  4. ^ a b c d e f 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 i j k l m 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 Database and Dictionary of Greek Loanwords in Coptic (DDGLC), Freie Universität Berlin and Universität Leipzig
  8. ^ a b c d Kriaras, Emmanuel, Επιτομή του Λεξικού της μεσαιωνικής ελληνικής δημώδους γραμματείας 1100–1669, Κέντρο Ελληνικής Γλώσσας, https://www.greek-language.gr
  9. ^ a b Ινστιτούτο Νεοελληνικών Σπουδών (Ίδρυμα Μανόλη Τριανταφυλλίδη) (1998), Λεξικό της κοινής νεοελληνικής, Thessaloniki: Aristotle University of Thessaloniki
  10. ^ Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
  11. ^ a b c d Rodríguez Adrados, Francisco, et al., eds. (1980–), Diccionario Griego-Español, Madrid: CSIC, http://dge.cchs.csic.es/xdge
  12. ^ Keersmaekers, Alek (2021–2025), GLAUx: The Greek Language Automated corpus, https://github.com/alekkeersmaekers/glaux
  13. ^ a b Diggle, James, et al., eds. (2021), The Cambridge Greek Lexicon, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press