Etymologically
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πτάρνυμαι

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Pronunciation

  • 5th-century BC Attic: /ptár.ny.mai̯/[1]
  • 4th-century AD Koine: /ˈptar.ny.mɛ/[1]
  • 10th-century Byzantine: /ˈptar.ny.me/[1]

Forms

πτᾰ́ρνῠμαι (ptárnumai) [1]

Etymology

It is an imitative word, probably related to Latin sternuō (“to sneeze”) and Old Irish sreod (“sneezing”).[2][3][4] LIV and Pokorny set up a root Proto-Indo-European *pster- (“to sneeze”), but Beekes, Frisk and Chantraine regard that reconstruction as hypothetical.[5][2][3][4] The present is a nasal present, like the Latin verb.[4] Chantraine notes that such presents, which mark the end point of an action, suit a verb meaning “to sneeze”.[4] Strunk explained it as an ablauting nasal present, with the full grade in the root in Latin and in the ending in Greek, so that the Greek root has the zero grade.[2] The root aorist ἔπταρον (éptaron) is the older form.[6][4] πτάρνυμαι is the present used by early prose writers, and πταίρω (ptaírō) is rare and late.[6][4]

A form with an aspirate, ἀποφθαράξασθαι (apophtharáxasthai), glossed by Hesychius as Cretan and Samian for blowing a noise out through the nostrils, matches Latin stertō (“to snore”) in meaning.[2][3][4]

Earliest recorded meaning

The Odyssey has the aorist: someone “sneezed loudly”, and the sneeze was taken as a good omen.[6][7][8]

Semantic evolution

Sneezing remained an omen: Xenophon tells of a sneeze taken as a good sign, while in Menander people are upset when someone sneezes.[7][6] Plato's Symposium has the advice to tickle the nose and then sneeze.[6] The present πτάρνυμαι is found in the Hippocratic writers and Xenophon, beside the aorist πταρεῖν in Herodotus and Attic.[7][2] Its noun πταρμός (ptarmós) “sneeze” gave πταρμική (ptarmikḗ), a plant that makes one sneeze.[4][3] A Greek epigram uses the verb of a lamp that sputters.[6]

Medieval Greek remade the verb as *πταρνίζομαι on the aorist stem, and Modern Greek has φταρνίζομαι (ftarnízome) and φτερνίζομαι “to sneeze”, with /pt/ becoming /ft/.[9][10][4]

Timeline

  • Homer – The Odyssey has the aorist for a loud sneeze taken as an omen.[6][7]
  • 5th century BC – Herodotus uses the aorist infinitive, and the Hippocratic writers the present πτάρνυμαι.[7][8][11]
  • 5th–4th century BC – Xenophon reports a sneeze taken as a good omen, and Plato's Symposium has a speaker told to sneeze.[7][6][11]
  • 4th century BC – Menander's characters treat a sneeze as a bad omen.[7]
  • Medieval Greek – A new present in -ίζομαι is formed, the source of the Modern Greek verb.[9]
  • Modern Greek – φταρνίζομαι (ftarnízome) means “to sneeze”.[9]

Meanings

Verb

  1. To sneeze; a sneeze could be taken as a good or a bad omen.[7][6]
  2. (of a lamp) To sputter.[6]

Usage notes

The present πτάρνυμαι is middle in form, but the aorist is active, ἔπταρον, infinitive πταρεῖν; a passive aorist participle πταρείς is found in the Hippocratic writers and Aristotle.[7][6][4]

References

  1. ^ a b c d Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
  2. ^ a b c d e 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 g h i j 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. ^ Rix, Helmut, et al. (2001), Lexikon der indogermanischen Verben, 2nd ed., Wiesbaden: Reichert
  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 d e f g h i Diggle, James, et al., eds. (2021), The Cambridge Greek Lexicon, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press
  8. ^ a b Keersmaekers, Alek (2021–2025), GLAUx: The Greek Language Automated corpus, https://github.com/alekkeersmaekers/glaux
  9. ^ a b c 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 Rodríguez Adrados, Francisco, et al., eds. (1980–), Diccionario Griego-Español, Madrid: CSIC, http://dge.cchs.csic.es/xdge