Etymologically
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πῖλος

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Pronunciation

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

Forms

πῖλος (pîlos) m (genitive πῑ́λου); second declension[1]

Etymology

Beekes and Frisk consider it most probably an old culture word of unknown origin.[2][3] Similar words for “felt” are Latin pilleus (“felt cap”), Old High German filz, Old English felt and Old East Slavic пълсть (pŭlstĭ, “felt cover”),[2] but each is ambiguous.[2] The Germanic words point to an s-stem, which may instead belong with Old High German falzen (“to join”), and the Latin word may be linked with Latin pilus (“hair”).[2]

Schmidt reconstructed Proto-Indo-European *pil-s-, a zero grade of an s-stem beside the word for “hair”, and Pokorny follows him,[4][2] but Beekes no longer finds this convincing and Frisk calls it a paper construction.[2][3] Wiktionary instead groups it with Proto-Slavic *pьlstь (“felt”) and the English word felt.[1]

Earliest recorded meaning

In the Iliad it is the felt lining of the leather helmet that Meriones gives to Odysseus.[5][6][7] Hesiod uses it for the felt lining of shoes and for a felt cap.[6][7]

Semantic evolution

From the felt itself the word passed to things made of it: caps, shoes, blankets and mats, horse-cloths and the felt jerkin that Thucydides mentions.[6][8][7] Above all it was a conical close-fitting cap, worn by craftsmen and others, and Herodotus uses it of the caps of eastern peoples.[7][6] Aristophanes jokingly calls a helmet a “brass felt hat”, and Plato uses it playfully of human hair.[6][8]

Theophrastus uses it for touchwood and for the bud of the lotus.[6][2] According to Saalfeld, Latin pilleus is a borrowing of it.[9] In Modern Greek πίλος (pílos) is a learned word for a hat.[10][11]

Timeline

  • Homer – The Iliad uses it for the felt lining of a helmet.[5][6]
  • Before the 6th century BC – Hesiod uses it for felt shoes and a felt cap.[6][12]
  • 5th century BC – Herodotus uses it for felt blankets and the caps of eastern peoples.[6][7][12]
  • 5th century BC – Thucydides uses it for a felt jerkin.[6][7][12]
  • 4th–3rd century BC – Theophrastus uses it for touchwood.[6][12]
  • Modern Greek – πίλος (pílos) is a learned word for a hat.[10]

Meanings

Noun

  1. Wool or hair compressed into felt, as a lining of helmets or boots.[8][6]
  2. A close-fitting felt cap.[8][6]
  3. A felt shoe.[6]
  4. Felt cloth, used for carpets, mats and tents.[8][6]
  5. A felt cuirass or jerkin.[6]
  6. Touchwood, a fungus.[6][2]
  7. The bud of the lotus.[2][6]

Word family

  • πιλέω (pīléō)
  • πίλινος (pílinos)

References

  1. ^ a b c d e Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
  2. ^ a b c d e f g h i 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. ^ Pokorny, Julius (1959), Indogermanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, Bern; Munich: Francke
  5. ^ a b Cunliffe, Richard John (1924), A Lexicon of the Homeric Dialect, London: Blackie and Son
  6. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r 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 Cancik, Hubert; Schneider, Helmuth, eds. (2002–2010), Brill's New Pauly: Encyclopaedia of the Ancient World, Leiden: Brill
  8. ^ a b c d e Diggle, James, et al., eds. (2021), The Cambridge Greek Lexicon, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press
  9. ^ Saalfeld, Günther Alexander (1874), Index Graecorum vocabulorum in linguam latinam translatorum, Berlin: Weidmann
  10. ^ a b Ινστιτούτο Νεοελληνικών Σπουδών (Ίδρυμα Μανόλη Τριανταφυλλίδη) (1998), Λεξικό της κοινής νεοελληνικής, Thessaloniki: Aristotle University of Thessaloniki
  11. ^ Babiniotis, Georgios (2010), Ετυμολογικό λεξικό της νέας ελληνικής γλώσσας [Etymological Dictionary of Modern Greek], Athens: Κέντρο Λεξικολογίας
  12. ^ a b c d Rodríguez Adrados, Francisco, et al., eds. (1980–), Diccionario Griego-Español, Madrid: CSIC, http://dge.cchs.csic.es/xdge