Etymologically
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πρόσωπον

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Pronunciation

  • 5th-century BC Attic: /pró.sɔː.pon/[1]
  • 4th-century AD Koine: /ˈpro.so.pon/[1]
  • 10th-century Byzantine: /ˈpro.so.pon/[1]

Forms

πρόσωπον (prósōpon) n (genitive προσώπου); second declension[1] Epic plural also προσώπατα, dative προσώπασι, an enlargement favoured by the metre.[2][3]

Etymology

It is a hypostatic compound like μέτωπον (métōpon, “forehead”), from *protiōpon, made from Ancient Greek πρότι (próti, “facing, towards”) + ὤψ (ṓps, “eye, face”), meaning “what is opposite the eyes (of another)”.[2][4][1] It may later have been felt as a verbal noun of προτιόσσομαι (protióssomai, “to look at”), as German Angesicht is.[2][4]

Beekes notes that it corresponds closely to Sanskrit प्रतीक (prátīka-, “face, appearance”) and to Tocharian B pratsāko (“breast”), all from Proto-Indo-European *proti-h₃kʷ-; the Greek word may continue that old compound, though the sound change this requires is doubtful, or may have been made again in Greek from πρότι (próti) and the stem of ὤψ (ṓps).[2][1] Chantraine compares the parallel formation of Gothic 𐌰𐌽𐌳𐌰𐌿𐌲𐌹 (andaugi, “face”).[4]

Earliest recorded meaning

It appears in Homer: in the Iliad it is the face, often in the plural for one person's face.[5][6][3]

Semantic evolution

From the face the word passed to the countenance as showing feelings (tragedy, Thucydides, Aristophanes), to the front or façade of a building (Pindar, Euripides), and to outward appearance.[3][6] In Attic it named the actor's mask (Demosthenes, Aristotle), and Polybius uses it for the death-mask of an ancestor, the Roman imago; from the mask came the role and the person in a story or in public life.[3][6] Grammarians used it for grammatical person.[6]

The Septuagint and the New Testament use it in idioms: to “take the face” of someone is to show partiality, whence προσωπολήπτης (prosōpolḗptēs), and “before the face of” means in front of.[3][6][7] It was borrowed into Coptic as ⲡⲣⲟⲥⲱⲡⲟⲛ (prosōpon), attested in Sahidic from about AD 500.[8]

Modern Greek πρόσωπο (prósopo) continues it as “face”; its senses “person” and “character” are learned, partly modelled on French personne and personnage.[9][10]

Timeline

  • Homer – The Iliad uses it for the face.[5][6]
  • 6th–5th century BC – Pindar uses it of the front of a building.[3][11]
  • 4th century BC – Demosthenes and Aristotle use it for an actor's mask.[3][11]
  • 2nd century BC – Polybius uses it for a person or role in history.[3][11]
  • 1st century AD – The New Testament has the phrase “to take the face”, for partiality.[3][7]
  • Modern Greek – Modern Greek πρόσωπο (prósopo) means “face” and “person”.[9]

Meanings

Noun

  1. The face of a person, also in the plural for one face; of an animal or bird.[3][6]
  2. Countenance, look, expression.[3]
  3. The front or façade of a building; outward appearance.[3][6]
  4. An actor's mask; a death-mask.[3][6]
  5. A character, role or person; a leading figure.[3][6]
  6. (grammar) Grammatical person.[6]
  7. In phrases: κατὰ πρόσωπον “face to face, in person”; λαμβάνειν πρόσωπον (New Testament) “to show partiality”.[3][7]

Word family

  • ἀντιπρόσωπος (antiprósōpos)
  • ἀπρόσωπος (aprósōpos)
  • εὐπρόσωπος (euprósōpos)
  • προσωπεῖον (prosōpeîon)
  • ἐμπρόσωπος (emprósōpos)
  • προσωπολήπτης (prosōpolḗptēs)
  • ὤψ (ṓps)
  • μέτωπον (métōpon)
  • English prosopon

References

  1. ^ a b c d e f Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
  2. ^ a b c d 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 h i j k l m n o Diggle, James, et al., eds. (2021), The Cambridge Greek Lexicon, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press
  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 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. ^ a b c Bauer, Walter; Danker, Frederick W., et al. (2000), A Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament and Other Early Christian Literature, 3rd ed., Chicago: University of Chicago Press
  8. ^ Database and Dictionary of Greek Loanwords in Coptic (DDGLC), Freie Universität Berlin and Universität Leipzig
  9. ^ a b Ινστιτούτο Νεοελληνικών Σπουδών (Ίδρυμα Μανόλη Τριανταφυλλίδη) (1998), Λεξικό της κοινής νεοελληνικής, Thessaloniki: Aristotle University of Thessaloniki
  10. ^ Babiniotis, Georgios (2010), Ετυμολογικό λεξικό της νέας ελληνικής γλώσσας [Etymological Dictionary of Modern Greek], Athens: Κέντρο Λεξικολογίας
  11. ^ a b c Rodríguez Adrados, Francisco, et al., eds. (1980–), Diccionario Griego-Español, Madrid: CSIC, http://dge.cchs.csic.es/xdge