Etymologically
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στάχυς

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Pronunciation

  • 5th-century BC Attic: /stá.kʰyːs/[1]
  • 4th-century AD Koine: /ˈsta.çys/[1]
  • 10th-century Byzantine: /ˈsta.çys/[1]

Forms

στᾰ́χῡ̆ς (stákhūs) m (genitive στᾰ́χῠος); third declension[1]

Etymology

Beekes considers it Pre-Greek, because of the variant ἄσταχυς (ástakhus), which is hard to explain from Indo-European.[2][3][1]

Frisk and Chantraine follow Fick in deriving it from Proto-Indo-European *stengʰ- (“to be pointed, sting”), with the zero grade.[4][5] That root would be seen in Old Norse stinga (“to sting”), Old English stingan (“to sting”), Old High German stanga (“pole, stake”), Middle High German stunge (“prickle”) and Lithuanian stangùs (“stiff”).[2][5][4] Beekes doubts the Baltic words, whose accent points to *steng-.[2] He compares the Greek στόνυξ (stónux, “sharp point”) and στόχος (stókhos).[2][4]

Earliest recorded meaning

It is first found in Homer, in the plural, for ears of corn.[6][7][8] Hesiod's Works and Days has it too.[6][9]

Semantic evolution

Tragedy uses it for a crop, and figuratively for the harvest of ruin that insolence brings forth.[7][6] Euripides uses it of the Theban men sprung from the dragon's teeth, and of children, and Aristophanes for the crop of prisoners taken at Sphacteria.[6][7]

As a technical word it named the brightest star of Virgo, Spica, in Aratus; a plant, base horehound, in Dioscorides; and the spica bandage in medical writers.[6][2] The spikenard is called ναρδόσταχυς (nardóstakhus) or νάρδου στάχυς.[6][10] The Septuagint uses it to translate the word shibboleth.[6] In the Gospels the disciples pick ears of wheat on the Sabbath.[10]

Modern Greek στάχυ (stáchi) is from a diminutive *στάχυον, which Triantafyllidis dates to the Hellenistic or medieval period and Babiniotis to late Hellenistic Greek.[11][12] The learned Modern Greek στάχυς (stáchys) is a botanical term for a spike, its meaning modelled on French épi.[11]

Timeline

  • Homer – The Iliad uses it for ears of corn.[6][8]
  • Before the 6th century BC – Hesiod uses it in the Works and Days.[6][13]
  • 6th–5th century BC – Aeschylus speaks of a crop of ruin.[6][7][13]
  • 5th century BC – Euripides uses it of the men sprung from the dragon's teeth.[6][13]
  • 4th–3rd century BC – Aratus names the star Spica with it.[6][13]
  • 1st century AD – Dioscorides uses it for a plant, base horehound.[6][13]
  • Modern Greek – The everyday word is στάχυ, from a diminutive.[11][12]

Meanings

Noun

  1. An ear of corn; collectively, the crop.[6][7]
  2. (figurative) A crop or harvest of men, of children, of ruin; offspring, scion.[7][6]
  3. (astronomy) Spica, the brightest star in Virgo.[6]
  4. (botany) Base horehound, a plant.[6][2]
  5. (medicine) A spica bandage.[6][2]
  6. The lower part of the abdomen.[6]

Word family

  • ναρδόσταχυς (nardóstakhus)
  • ἄσταχυς (ástakhus)

References

  1. ^ a b c d e Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
  2. ^ a b c d e f g 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. ^ Beekes, Robert S. P. (2014), Pre-Greek: Phonology, Morphology, Lexicon, ed. Stefan Norbruis, Leiden; Boston: Brill
  4. ^ a b c Frisk, Hjalmar (1960–1972), Griechisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3 vols, Heidelberg: Carl Winter
  5. ^ 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
  6. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s 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 Diggle, James, et al., eds. (2021), The Cambridge Greek Lexicon, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press
  8. ^ a b Cunliffe, Richard John (1924), A Lexicon of the Homeric Dialect, London: Blackie and Son
  9. ^ Keersmaekers, Alek (2021–2025), GLAUx: The Greek Language Automated corpus, https://github.com/alekkeersmaekers/glaux
  10. ^ a b 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
  11. ^ a b c Ινστιτούτο Νεοελληνικών Σπουδών (Ίδρυμα Μανόλη Τριανταφυλλίδη) (1998), Λεξικό της κοινής νεοελληνικής, Thessaloniki: Aristotle University of Thessaloniki
  12. ^ a b Babiniotis, Georgios (2010), Ετυμολογικό λεξικό της νέας ελληνικής γλώσσας [Etymological Dictionary of Modern Greek], Athens: Κέντρο Λεξικολογίας
  13. ^ a b c d e Rodríguez Adrados, Francisco, et al., eds. (1980–), Diccionario Griego-Español, Madrid: CSIC, http://dge.cchs.csic.es/xdge