σπλήν
Pronunciation
- 5th-century BC Attic: /splɛ̌ːn/[1]
- 4th-century AD Koine: /ˈsplin/[1]
- 10th-century Byzantine: /ˈsplin/[1]
Forms
σπλήν (splḗn) m (genitive σπληνός); third declension[1] Coptic borrowed it as ⲥⲉⲗⲉⲡⲓⲛ (selepin), first in a manuscript of about AD 875.[2]
Etymology
It is inherited from Proto-Indo-European *spl(ē)gʰ-n- (“spleen”) in Beekes's notation, but the exact preform is unclear.[3] Several branches have similar words for the spleen, and they differ too much for a single Indo-European word to be reconstructed: Latin liēn, Sanskrit प्लीहन् (plīhán), Avestan spərəzan-, Middle Irish selg, Lithuanian blužnìs and probably Old Armenian փայծաղն (pʻaycałn).[3][1] Chantraine explains the variation by linguistic taboo, since the spleen mattered in sacrifice, divination and medicine.[4]
Beekes starts from a stem *σπληχ- (*splēkh-) or *σπλαχ- (*splakh-), an n-stem like the Latin word, whose nasal, anticipated, gave σπλάγχνον (splánkhnon), and σπλήν may come from *σπληχήν (*splēkhḗn) by haplology, after the monosyllable φρήν (phrḗn).[3] Like that word and αὐχήν (aukhḗn) it is an n-stem name of a body part.[3][4]
Earliest recorded meaning
It first appears in Herodotus and the Hippocratic writings, meaning the spleen or milt of animals and humans.[5][6][7]
Semantic evolution
The Hippocratic writers use the plural for diseases of the spleen and the word for a compress of lint.[5][3] Aristophanes' phrase “to throw out one's spleen” describes someone dying of anxiety, and the CGL takes one passage of his as “anger, annoyance”.[5][6] In Pseudo-Dioscorides “goat's spleen” is a name of the mallow.[5][3]
It was borrowed as Latin splēn, the source of English spleen.[3][8][9] Medieval Greek made it feminine, Modern Greek σπλήνα (splína), from the accusative, after καρδιά (kardiá) “heart”; this is the Modern Greek word.[10]
Timeline
- 5th century BC – Herodotus and the Hippocratic On Ancient Medicine use it for the spleen.[5][7]
- 5th–4th century BC – Aristophanes uses “to throw out one's spleen” of a man dying of anxiety.[5]
- About AD 875 – A Coptic manuscript has the borrowed form ⲥⲉⲗⲉⲡⲓⲛ.[2]
- Medieval Greek – The feminine σπλήνα replaces it.[10]
Meanings
Noun
- The spleen or milt, of animals or humans.[5][6]
- (plural, medicine) Diseases of the spleen.[5]
- (medicine) A compress, the same as σπληνίον (splēníon).[5][3]
- (figurative) Anger, annoyance (a doubtful sense in Aristophanes).[6]
- “Goat's spleen”: the mallow.[5]
Related words
- σπλάγχνον (splánkhnon)
- Latin splēn
- English spleen
References
- ^ a b c d e Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
- ^ a b Database and Dictionary of Greek Loanwords in Coptic (DDGLC), Freie Universität Berlin and Universität Leipzig
- ^ a b c d e f g h 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
- ^ a b 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
- ^ a b c d e f g h i j Liddell, Henry George; Scott, Robert; Jones, Henry Stuart (1940), A Greek-English Lexicon, 9th ed., Oxford: Clarendon Press
- ^ a b c d Diggle, James, et al., eds. (2021), The Cambridge Greek Lexicon, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press
- ^ a b Keersmaekers, Alek (2021–2025), GLAUx: The Greek Language Automated corpus, https://github.com/alekkeersmaekers/glaux
- ^ Saalfeld, Günther Alexander (1874), Index Graecorum vocabulorum in linguam latinam translatorum, Berlin: Weidmann
- ^ Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
- ^ a b Ινστιτούτο Νεοελληνικών Σπουδών (Ίδρυμα Μανόλη Τριανταφυλλίδη) (1998), Λεξικό της κοινής νεοελληνικής, Thessaloniki: Aristotle University of Thessaloniki