Etymologically
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πόντος

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Pronunciation

  • 5th-century BC Attic: /pón.tos/[1]
  • 4th-century AD Koine: /ˈpon.tos/[1]
  • 10th-century Byzantine: /ˈpon.tos/[1]

Forms

πόντος (póntos) m (genitive πόντου); second declension[1] Wiktionary records the Mycenaean form Mycenaean Greek po-to.[1]

Etymology

It is inherited from Proto-Hellenic *póntos, inherited from Proto-Indo-European *pónteh₁s (“path, road”).[1] Together with πάτος (pátos, “path”) it continues an old Indo-European noun with ablaut of the root, nominative *pont-éh₁-s, genitive *pn̥t-h₁-ós.[2] Cognates include Sanskrit पन्था (pánthā, “way”), Avestan pantā, Latin pōns (“bridge”), Old Armenian հուն (hun, “ford”) and Old Prussian pintis (“road”); in Germanic the root is mainly a verb, as in Gothic 𐍆𐌹𐌽𐌸𐌰𐌽 (finþan, “to find”).[2][1][3]

Chantraine, following Benveniste, explains the sense.[3] The Vedic word is not a mere road but a way that one opens through obstacles, and Latin and Armenian specialised the notion of crossing in two ways, “bridge” and “ford”.[3] In Greek the word was first the crossing of a strait by sea (as in Ἑλλήσποντος (Hellḗspontos)), and then the sea itself, seen as a passage from one land to another, which is no surprise for a seafaring people.[3]

Ancient grammarians had other explanations.[4] Philoxenus derived it from πόνος (pónos, “toil”), because of the hardships of seafaring, and Herodian from πνέω (pnéō, “to blow”), with the letters reversed, since the winds come from the sea.[4]

Earliest recorded meaning

It is common in Homer for the sea, especially the open sea, with epithets such as boundless, misty, dark, wine-faced and full of fish, and in contrast with the land.[5][6] The Iliad has πόντος ἁλός, “the deep of the sea” (21.59).[6]

Semantic evolution

In poetry it remained a general word for the sea; in prose it is used mainly for particular seas, though Thucydides speaks of a wind blowing from the sea.[5] The Black Sea was ὁ Εὔξεινος πόντος or simply ὁ Πόντος, and the name passed to the southern coast of that sea and to a state there (Appian).[2][7] In Hesiod, Pontos is a god, a son of Earth.[8]

The New Testament has the region of Pontus (Acts 2:9).[7] English Pontus comes from the Latinized form of the name.[9] It survives as Modern Greek πόντος (póntos), a learned word for the open sea.[10]

Timeline

  • Homer – The Iliad and the Odyssey use it for the open sea.[5][6]
  • Before the 6th century BC – Hesiod names Pontos as a son of Earth.[8][11]
  • 5th century BC – Thucydides uses it of a wind blowing from the sea (4.26).[5][11]
  • 2nd century AD – Appian uses Πόντος for the kingdom on the southern coast of the Black Sea.[2][11]
  • Modern Greek – It survives as a learned word for the open sea.[10]

Meanings

Noun

  1. The sea, especially the open, deep sea.[5][8][6]
  2. A particular sea, defined by an adjective, such as the Aegean, the Ionian or the Black Sea.[8][5]
  3. (personified) Pontos, a son of Earth.[8]
  4. (proper noun) Pontus, the region on the southern coast of the Black Sea, and the kingdom there.[2][7]

Word family

  • ποντοπόρος (pontopóros)

Usage notes

There is a second Modern Greek πόντος (póntos), “point, centimetre”, a borrowing from Venetian ponto.[10][12]

References

  1. ^ a b c d e f g 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 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
  4. ^ a b Etygram: ancient etymologies of Greek words, CEPAM, Université Côte d'Azur, http://appsweb-cepam.unice.fr/etygram
  5. ^ a b c d e f Liddell, Henry George; Scott, Robert; Jones, Henry Stuart (1940), A Greek-English Lexicon, 9th ed., Oxford: Clarendon Press
  6. ^ a b c d Cunliffe, Richard John (1924), A Lexicon of the Homeric Dialect, London: Blackie and Son
  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. ^ a b c d e Diggle, James, et al., eds. (2021), The Cambridge Greek Lexicon, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press
  9. ^ Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
  10. ^ a b c Ινστιτούτο Νεοελληνικών Σπουδών (Ίδρυμα Μανόλη Τριανταφυλλίδη) (1998), Λεξικό της κοινής νεοελληνικής, Thessaloniki: Aristotle University of Thessaloniki
  11. ^ a b c Rodríguez Adrados, Francisco, et al., eds. (1980–), Diccionario Griego-Español, Madrid: CSIC, http://dge.cchs.csic.es/xdge
  12. ^ Babiniotis, Georgios (2010), Ετυμολογικό λεξικό της νέας ελληνικής γλώσσας [Etymological Dictionary of Modern Greek], Athens: Κέντρο Λεξικολογίας