πυρά

Forms

πῠρᾱ́ (purā́) f (genitive πῠρᾶς); first declension^[1]

Etymology

It is from Ancient Greek πῦρ (pûr, “fire”).^[2][3][4] The feminine, Epic and Ionic πυρή (purḗ), means “fireplace, pyre”; beside it stands a neuter plural meaning “watch-fires”, which Beekes explains as the old plural of the noun for fire, passed into the o-stems with a shift of accent.^[2][1] Both are found from the Iliad on.^[2]

πῦρ (pûr) goes back to Proto-Indo-European *péh₂wr̥ (“fire”), an r/n-stem that Hittite still inflects as such (Hittite paḫḫur, genitive paḫḫuenaš).^[2][5] Cognate with Gothic 𐍆𐍉𐌽 (fōn), Old Armenian հուր (hur) and Umbrian pir, all meaning “fire”.^[2]

Earliest recorded meaning

In Homer the feminine is the funeral pyre, as when the pyres of the dead burn thick in the camp at the start of the Iliad, and the neuter plural is the watch-fires of an army at night.^[3][6]

Semantic evolution

The funeral pyre remained the main sense of the feminine, in Pindar, Sophocles, Herodotus and Plato;^[3][7] it also meant any place where a fire is kindled, an altar fire for sacrifice or a hearth.^[3][8] The neuter plural meant watch-fires and beacons in Herodotus, Thucydides and Xenophon, and Aristotle uses it of volcanic fires.^[3][9]

In the Septuagint and the New Testament ἡ πυρά is a pile of burning material, a fire such as the one lit on Malta for the shipwrecked Paul (Acts 28:2); the martyrdom of Polycarp has the pyre of a confessor.^[4][10][11] Medieval vernacular Greek kept it for fire, heat and fever, and also formed a new πύρα (pýra) “heat” from the verb πυρώνω.^[12][13]

Latin took the word as pyra, from which English has pyre (1650s).^[14][8] Modern Greek πυρά (pyrá) is a learned word for fire, as in death by fire.^[13]

Timeline

• Homer – The Iliad has both the funeral pyre and, in the neuter plural, the watch-fires of the camp.^[3][6]
• 6th–5th century BC – Pindar uses it of funeral pyres.^[7][15]
• 5th century BC – Herodotus tells of Croesus set on a pyre, and Thucydides uses the neuter plural of beacon-fires.^[3][4][15]
• 4th century BC – Aristotle uses the neuter plural of volcanic fires.^[3][15]
• 1st century AD – The Acts of the Apostles uses it of a fire lit for the shipwrecked.^[4][11]
• 1100–1669 – Vernacular texts use it for fire, heat and fever.^[12]
• 1650s – English takes pyre from Latin and Greek.^[8]
• Modern Greek – The learned πυρά (pyrá) means a fire.^[13]

Meanings

Noun

1. A funeral pyre.^[3][7][4]
2. A place where a fire is lit; an altar fire, a hearth.^[3][8]
3. A pile of burning material, a fire.^[4][10][11]
4. (τὰ πυρά, neuter plural) Watch-fires of a camp; beacon-fires.^[3][9][6]

Related words

• πῦρ (pûr)
• πυρσός (pursós)
• πυρετός (puretós)
• Latin pyra
• English pyre

Usage notes

The neuter plural τὰ πυρά has an irregular dative πυροῖς in Xenophon.^[9][2] Photius and the Lexica Segueriana gloss πυρά as “burnings, fires”.^[16][17]

References

1. ^ a b c d e 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 f g h i j k Liddell, Henry George; Scott, Robert; Jones, Henry Stuart (1940), A Greek-English Lexicon, 9th ed., Oxford: Clarendon Press
4. ^ a b c d e f 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
5. ^ Wodtko, Dagmar S.; Irslinger, Britta; Schneider, Carolin (2008), Nomina im indogermanischen Lexikon, Heidelberg: Winter
6. ^ a b c Cunliffe, Richard John (1924), A Lexicon of the Homeric Dialect, London: Blackie and Son
7. ^ a b c Slater, William J. (1969), Lexicon to Pindar, Berlin: De Gruyter
8. ^ a b c d Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
9. ^ a b c Diggle, James, et al., eds. (2021), The Cambridge Greek Lexicon, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press
10. ^ a b Lust, Johan; Eynikel, Erik; Hauspie, Katrin (2003), Greek-English Lexicon of the Septuagint, rev. ed., Stuttgart: Deutsche Bibelgesellschaft
11. ^ a b c Abbott-Smith, G. (1922), A Manual Greek Lexicon of the New Testament, Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark
12. ^ a b Kriaras, Emmanuel, Επιτομή του Λεξικού της μεσαιωνικής ελληνικής δημώδους γραμματείας 1100–1669, Κέντρο Ελληνικής Γλώσσας, https://www.greek-language.gr
13. ^ a b c Ινστιτούτο Νεοελληνικών Σπουδών (Ίδρυμα Μανόλη Τριανταφυλλίδη) (1998), Λεξικό της κοινής νεοελληνικής, Thessaloniki: Aristotle University of Thessaloniki
14. ^ Saalfeld, Günther Alexander (1874), Index Graecorum vocabulorum in linguam latinam translatorum, Berlin: Weidmann
15. ^ a b c Rodríguez Adrados, Francisco, et al., eds. (1980–), Diccionario Griego-Español, Madrid: CSIC, http://dge.cchs.csic.es/xdge
16. ^ Photius, Lexicon, ed. Christos Theodoridis, vol. 1 (Α–Δ) (Berlin: De Gruyter, 1982); ed. Richard Porson (Cambridge, 1822)
17. ^ Lexica Segueriana, in Immanuel Bekker, ed. (1814), Anecdota Graeca I, Berlin: Nauck