Etymologically
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σίφων

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Pronunciation

  • 5th-century BC Attic: /sǐː.pʰɔːn/[1]
  • 4th-century AD Koine: /ˈsi.ɸon/[1]
  • 10th-century Byzantine: /ˈsi.fon/[1]

Forms

σῑ́φων (sī́phōn) m (genitive σῑ́φωνος); third declension[1]

Etymology

The origin is unknown.[2][3] It is a technical term, formed like ἄμβων (ámbōn) and δόλων (dólōn).[2][3] Beekes and Chantraine suggest it may imitate a sound.[2][3] Wiktionary mentions a sound-symbolic loan from a Mediterranean substrate, and the usual comparison with Latin tībia (“shinbone; pipe”), itself of unclear origin.[1]

The Etymologicum Magnum derived it from the noise made in sucking up a liquid, or from σίζω (sízō, “to hiss”).[4]

It was borrowed as Latin sīphō (“siphon; fire engine”).[5]

Earliest recorded meaning

Its first record is in the iambic poet Hipponax, in the 6th century BC, for a siphon used to draw wine from a jar.[6][7]

Semantic evolution

A papyrus of the 3rd century BC uses it in the same sense, and Hero defines it as a bent tube.[6] In Euripides' Cyclops it is used obscenely.[6] Later it named a pipe in general, a drainage tube in surgery, a pump, a fire engine, the water pipes of houses (in Strabo) and a waterspout; an epigram of Meleager calls mosquitoes “siphons of men's blood”.[6][7]

Timeline

  • 6th century BC – Hipponax uses it for a wine siphon.[6][7][8]
  • 5th century BC – Euripides uses it in an obscene sense in the Cyclops.[6][9]
  • 4th century BC – Aeneas Tacticus uses it for a tube.[6][9]
  • 1st century BC – 1st century AD – Strabo uses it for water pipes in houses.[6][8]
  • 2nd century AD – A London papyrus uses it for a pump.[6][7]

Meanings

Noun

  1. A tube, pipe.[6][2]
  2. A siphon, especially for drawing wine from a cask or jar.[6]
  3. A drainage tube in surgery.[6]
  4. A pump; a fire engine; a water pipe in a house.[6][7]
  5. A waterspout.[6]
  6. A plant, the same as αἰγίλωψ (aigílōps), a kind of oat-grass.[2]

Word family

  • σιφωνολογία (siphōnología)
  • Latin sīphō

References

  1. ^ a b c d e 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 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. ^ Gaisford, Thomas, ed. (1848), Etymologicum Magnum, Oxford: Oxford University Press
  5. ^ Saalfeld, Günther Alexander (1874), Index Graecorum vocabulorum in linguam latinam translatorum, Berlin: Weidmann
  6. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n Liddell, Henry George; Scott, Robert; Jones, Henry Stuart (1940), A Greek-English Lexicon, 9th ed., Oxford: Clarendon Press
  7. ^ a b c d e 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 Rodríguez Adrados, Francisco, et al., eds. (1980–), Diccionario Griego-Español, Madrid: CSIC, http://dge.cchs.csic.es/xdge
  9. ^ a b Keersmaekers, Alek (2021–2025), GLAUx: The Greek Language Automated corpus, https://github.com/alekkeersmaekers/glaux