πόθος

Forms

πόθος (póthos) m (genitive πόθου); second declension^[1]

Etymology

It is from Ancient Greek ποθέω (pothéō, “to long for, miss”), a noun beside the verb.^[2][3] According to Beekes, the verb corresponds exactly to Old Irish guidid (“to pray”), both from an iterative formation *gʷʰodʰ-éye-, from the root *gʷʰedʰ- (“to ask for, desire”);^[2][1] the aorist θέσσασθαι (théssasthai, “to pray for”) is from the same root.^[2] Balto-Slavic has a present with a nasal: Lithuanian pa-si-gendù (“to long for, miss”), Old Church Slavonic жѧдати (žędati, “to desire”).^[2] Whether Gothic 𐌱𐌹𐌳𐌾𐌰𐌽 (bidjan, “to pray”) belongs here is disputed.^[2]

The Etymologicum Magnum derived it from πάσχω (páskhō) or πείθω (peíthō).^[4]

Earliest recorded meaning

Homer uses it for the longing for someone absent or dead: in the Iliad longing for a charioteer, in the Odyssey “longing for you”.^[5][6]

Semantic evolution

In Homer and later it is mostly yearning for what is absent, lost or dead.^[5][3] From Hesiod it also meant sexual desire or love, and Aeschylus makes Pothos, Desire, a child of Aphrodite together with Persuasion, and Pausanias names him with Eros and Himeros.^[5][3] The lexicographer Ammonius distinguished ἔρως (érōs), love for what is present, from πόθος, longing for what is absent.^[7] DatSemShift lists it among words that mean both “love” and “sadness, yearning”.^[8]

BDAG records the noun in early Christian writing (1 Clement) for a longing to do good.^[9] In medieval and Modern Greek πόθος (póthos) is a strong desire, especially an erotic one.^[10][11][12]

Timeline

• 8th century BC – Homer uses it for longing for the absent or dead.^[5][6]
• Before the 6th century BC – Hesiod uses it of erotic desire.^[5][3]
• 7th century BC – Alcman has the Laconian form πόσος (pósos).^[3]
• 5th century BC – Aeschylus personifies Pothos as a child of Aphrodite.^[5]
• 4th–3rd century BC – Theophrastus uses it as the name of a plant.^[2]
• Modern Greek – It means a strong desire or erotic longing.^[11]

Meanings

Noun

1. Longing, yearning for someone or something absent, lost or dead; regret.^[5][3]
2. Love, sexual desire.^[5][3]
3. Desire in general, wish (to do something).^[5][3][9]
4. (personified) Pothos, Desire, a companion of Aphrodite and Eros.^[5][3]

Word family

• ποθεινός (potheinós)

Related words

• ποθέω (pothéō)
• ποθή (pothḗ)

Usage notes

Theophrastus uses πόθος as the name of a plant, and LSJ records two plants so called, one of them larkspur.^[2][5] Triantafyllidis gives the Hellenistic plant as a kind of asphodel, and says that Modern Greek πόθος as the name of the house plant pothos is a separate learned word from New Latin pothos, a name from a language of India, though perhaps related.^[11]

References

1. ^ a b c d e Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f g 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 Diggle, James, et al., eds. (2021), The Cambridge Greek Lexicon, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press
4. ^ Gaisford, Thomas, ed. (1848), Etymologicum Magnum, Oxford: Oxford University Press
5. ^ 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
6. ^ a b Cunliffe, Richard John (1924), A Lexicon of the Homeric Dialect, London: Blackie and Son
7. ^ [Ammonius], De adfinium vocabulorum differentia, ed. K. Nickau (Leipzig: Teubner, 1966)
8. ^ Zalizniak, Anna A., et al. (2024), Database of Semantic Shifts (DatSemShift), Moscow: Institute of Linguistics, Russian Academy of Sciences, https://datsemshift.ru
9. ^ a b 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
10. ^ Kriaras, Emmanuel, Επιτομή του Λεξικού της μεσαιωνικής ελληνικής δημώδους γραμματείας 1100–1669, Κέντρο Ελληνικής Γλώσσας, https://www.greek-language.gr
11. ^ a b c Ινστιτούτο Νεοελληνικών Σπουδών (Ίδρυμα Μανόλη Τριανταφυλλίδη) (1998), Λεξικό της κοινής νεοελληνικής, Thessaloniki: Aristotle University of Thessaloniki
12. ^ Πάπυρος–Larousse–Britannica, Μέγα Λεξικό της Ελληνικής Γλώσσας, Athens: Πάπυρος