Etymologically
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σπέος

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Pronunciation

  • 5th-century BC Attic: /spé.os/[1]
  • 4th-century AD Koine: /ˈspe.os/[1]
  • 10th-century Byzantine: /ˈspe.os/[1]

Forms

σπέος (spéos) n (genitive σπείους); third declension[1] Epic σπεῖος, genitive σπείους, dative σπῆι, plural dative σπέσσι, σπήεσσι, genitive σπείων.[2][3]

Etymology

Beekes considers it, beyond doubt, Pre-Greek, following Furnée.[3][4][1] It is apparently related to σπήλαιον (spḗlaion, “cave”).[3][5]

Earliest recorded meaning

It is found from the Iliad on, meaning a cave: in the Iliad sheep are driven into one.[2][5]

Semantic evolution

σπέος is a word of epic poetry, with one prose witness, an inscription from Cyprus.[3][2] In the Odyssey it is the hollow cave of Calypso and the cave dwellings of the Cyclopes, and a ship can be drawn into one for shelter.[2][6] Homer has several unusual forms, σπεῖος, σπείους, σπῆι, σπέσσι and σπήεσσι.[2] Chantraine reads most of them as spellings of contracted or metrically lengthened forms of σπέε-.[2][7] Hesiod, the Homeric Hymns, Sophocles, Callimachus and Apollonius of Rhodes kept it in poetry.[5][8] The Etymologicum Magnum and Zonaras list it among their glosses.[9][10]

Timeline

  • Homer – The Iliad and the Odyssey use it for caves and grottoes.[2][5]
  • Before the 6th century BC – Hesiod's Theogony uses the dative σπῆι.[2][11][8]
  • 5th century BC – Sophocles uses it in a fragment.[8][11]
  • 4th–3rd century BC – Callimachus uses it.[5][11]

Meanings

Noun

  1. A cave, cavern or grotto.[2][5]

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 Liddell, Henry George; Scott, Robert; Jones, Henry Stuart (1940), A Greek-English Lexicon, 9th ed., Oxford: Clarendon Press
  3. ^ 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
  4. ^ Beekes, Robert S. P. (2014), Pre-Greek: Phonology, Morphology, Lexicon, ed. Stefan Norbruis, Leiden; Boston: Brill
  5. ^ a b c d e f Diggle, James, et al., eds. (2021), The Cambridge Greek Lexicon, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press
  6. ^ Πάπυρος–Larousse–Britannica, Μέγα Λεξικό της Ελληνικής Γλώσσας, Athens: Πάπυρος
  7. ^ 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
  8. ^ a b c Keersmaekers, Alek (2021–2025), GLAUx: The Greek Language Automated corpus, https://github.com/alekkeersmaekers/glaux
  9. ^ Gaisford, Thomas, ed. (1848), Etymologicum Magnum, Oxford: Oxford University Press
  10. ^ Pseudo-Zonaras, Lexicon, ed. Johann August Heinrich Tittmann (1808), Iohannis Zonarae Lexicon, Leipzig: Crusius
  11. ^ a b c Rodríguez Adrados, Francisco, et al., eds. (1980–), Diccionario Griego-Español, Madrid: CSIC, http://dge.cchs.csic.es/xdge