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πῆνος

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Etymology and origin of the Ancient Greek word πῆνος

Confidence
Unknown
First attested
400s Hesychius

Pronunciation

  • 5th-century BC Attic: /pɛ̂ː.nos/[1]
  • 4th-century AD Koine: /ˈpi.nos/[1]
  • 10th-century Byzantine: /ˈpi.nos/[1]

Forms

πῆνος (pênos) m (genitive πήνου); second declension[1]

Etymology

It goes with πήνη (pḗnē, “thread of the woof”), whose origin is unknown.[2][3] Beekes rejects a link with the verb πένομαι (pénomai, “to spin”) because of Doric ⟨ᾱ⟩ in πανίον (paníon).[2] Since Curtius and Fick the words have been compared with Latin pannus (“piece of cloth”) and Gothic 𐍆𐌰𐌽𐌰 (fana, “cloth”), but Frisk doubts the link and Beekes rejects it, because those words have short ⟨a⟩ and a different meaning.[3][2][1] Wiktionary mentions Proto-Indo-European *peh₂n- (“fabric”) as a possible source.[1] The ancient grammarians hesitated between a derivation from Pan and one from the verb to spin.[4]

Earliest recorded meaning

It is known only from the lexicographers: Hesychius glosses it as “woven stuff”.[5][6][2]

Semantic evolution

Pape gives it the sense of πήνη (pḗnē), the thread of the woof wound on the bobbin, and notes that πηνίον (pēníon) was the more usual word.[4] Latin pānus (“thread wound on a bobbin”) was borrowed from it.[1]

Timeline

  • 5th century AD (probably) – Hesychius glosses it as “woven stuff”.[5][6]

Meanings

Noun

  1. A web, woven stuff.[6][5][7]
  2. The thread of the woof wound on the bobbin, the same as πήνη.[4]
  • πήνη (pḗnē)
  • πηνίον (pēníon)
  • Latin pānus

References

  1. ^ a b c d e f g 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 Frisk, Hjalmar (1960–1972), Griechisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3 vols, Heidelberg: Carl Winter
  4. ^ a b c Pape, Wilhelm (1914), Griechisch-deutsches Handwörterbuch, 3rd ed., rev. Max Sengebusch, Braunschweig: Vieweg
  5. ^ a b c Hesychius of Alexandria, Lexicon, ed. Kurt Latte (Α–Ο, Copenhagen 1953–1966) and Moritz Schmidt (Π–Ω, Jena 1858–1868)
  6. ^ a b c Liddell, Henry George; Scott, Robert; Jones, Henry Stuart (1940), A Greek-English Lexicon, 9th ed., Oxford: Clarendon Press
  7. ^ Korinthios, J. (2025), Grande Dizionario Greco Classico: Greco–Italiano, digital ed., Milan: Hoepli
Cite this entry

“Πῆνος.” Etymologically, 1 Nov. 2026, etymologically.com/grc/%CF%80%E1%BF%86%CE%BD%CE%BF%CF%82. Accessed 2 Nov. 2026.

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