σηπία

Pronunciation

• 5th-century BC Attic: /sɛː.pí.aː/^[1]
• 4th-century AD Koine: /siˈpi.a/^[1]
• 10th-century Byzantine: /siˈpi.a/^[1]

Forms

σηπίᾱ (sēpíā) f (genitive σηπίᾱς); first declension^[1]

Etymology

The origin is uncertain.^[2][3] Beekes suggests that it may be Pre-Greek, from Pre-Greek.^[2] Its suffix is odd for an animal: nouns in -ία are normally abstracts, and names of fish usually end in -ίας (-íās), though ταινία (tainíā, “ribbon”) is comparable.^[2][4][5]

A connection with σήπομαι (sḗpomai, “to rot”), perhaps because the ink smells rotten, is possible in meaning but hard in form, since Epicharmus has σηπία with η while the verb has Doric forms in ᾱ.^[2][4] Chantraine and Babiniotis think the link may be only a popular etymology.^[3][5]

Earliest recorded meaning

Hipponax is the first author to name it, followed by Epicharmus; it is the cuttlefish.^[6][2]

Semantic evolution

In Aristophanes cuttlefish are an Athenian delicacy, and Aristotle describes the animal.^[6][7][8] Derivatives include the diminutive σηπίδιον (sēpídion) and σηπίον (sēpíon), the cuttlebone.^[3][4] The Epistle of Barnabas names it with the lamprey and the octopus.^[9]

It was borrowed into Latin sēpia,^[3][10] and through Italian seppia English took sepia in 1815 as the name of the brown pigment made from the animal's ink.^[11]

In medieval Greek it became Modern Greek σουπιά (soupiá), with synizesis and /i/ > /u/ beside the labial /p/; this is the Modern Greek name, and σηπία is the learned form.^[12][13][5]

Timeline

• 6th century BC – Hipponax uses it for the cuttlefish.^[6][7][14]
• 5th–4th century BC – Aristophanes mentions cuttlefish as a delicacy.^[6][14]
• 4th century BC – Aristotle describes the animal.^[6][14]
• 1815 – English borrows sepia, through Italian and Latin, for the pigment.^[11]
• Modern Greek – It survives as Modern Greek σουπιά (soupiá).^[12][5]

Meanings

Noun

1. The cuttlefish.^[6][7][2]

Related words

• Latin sēpia
• English sepia

References

1. ^ a b c d Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f 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 c Frisk, Hjalmar (1960–1972), Griechisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3 vols, Heidelberg: Carl Winter
5. ^ a b c d Babiniotis, Georgios (2010), Ετυμολογικό λεξικό της νέας ελληνικής γλώσσας [Etymological Dictionary of Modern Greek], Athens: Κέντρο Λεξικολογίας
6. ^ a b c d e f Liddell, Henry George; Scott, Robert; Jones, Henry Stuart (1940), A Greek-English Lexicon, 9th ed., Oxford: Clarendon Press
7. ^ a b c Diggle, James, et al., eds. (2021), The Cambridge Greek Lexicon, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press
8. ^ Keersmaekers, Alek (2021–2025), GLAUx: The Greek Language Automated corpus, https://github.com/alekkeersmaekers/glaux
9. ^ 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. ^ Saalfeld, Günther Alexander (1874), Index Graecorum vocabulorum in linguam latinam translatorum, Berlin: Weidmann
11. ^ a b Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
12. ^ a b Ινστιτούτο Νεοελληνικών Σπουδών (Ίδρυμα Μανόλη Τριανταφυλλίδη) (1998), Λεξικό της κοινής νεοελληνικής, Thessaloniki: Aristotle University of Thessaloniki
13. ^ Kriaras, Emmanuel, Επιτομή του Λεξικού της μεσαιωνικής ελληνικής δημώδους γραμματείας 1100–1669, Κέντρο Ελληνικής Γλώσσας, https://www.greek-language.gr
14. ^ a b c Rodríguez Adrados, Francisco, et al., eds. (1980–), Diccionario Griego-Español, Madrid: CSIC, http://dge.cchs.csic.es/xdge