στίλη

Forms

στῐ́λη (stílē), feminine; the ⟨ι⟩ is short.^[1][2]

Etymology

The origin is uncertain.^[3] Frisk and Beekes take it as the same word as Latin stilla (“drop”), apart from the Latin double ⟨ll⟩, which may be expressive.^[4][5] They note, though, that the Latin word may stand for an older form with ⟨r⟩, since Latin also has stīria (“(frozen) drop”).^[4][5]

Chantraine doubts the link with Latin.^[3] The sense “drop” rests on a gloss of Hesychius, and he suspects that this part of the gloss itself comes from confusion with the Latin word.^[3][6] He suggests instead that στίλη may be a copying error in uncial script for a form στίγη (stígē), meaning the same as στιγμή (stigmḗ, “point, instant”), which the metre of the line would need.^[3]

Earliest recorded meaning

The word occurs once, in Aristophanes' Wasps (line 213), where a slave says they dozed off for just a tiny moment, “just a στίλη”.^[1][3][7] There it means a moment or a tiny bit of time.^[2][1]

Semantic evolution

Ancient readers were already unsure of the sense.^[3] A scholiast on the passage explained it as “the smallest amount”, and Callistratus as a very small coin, an explanation Chantraine finds baseless.^[3] Hesychius glosses the forms στίλα and στίλη as “nothing” or “any chance thing”, and also as a drop of liquid.^[3][6]

Timeline

• 5th–4th century BC – Aristophanes uses it in the Wasps of a moment's sleep.^[1][2][8]
• 5th century AD (probably) – Hesychius glosses it as “nothing”, “any chance thing” and “a drop”.^[3][6][8]

Meanings

Noun

1. A drop; figuratively, a tiny bit.^[1][4]
2. A moment, an instant (of time).^[2][1]

Related words

• στιγμή (stigmḗ)
• Latin stilla

References

1. ^ a b c d e f Liddell, Henry George; Scott, Robert; Jones, Henry Stuart (1940), A Greek-English Lexicon, 9th ed., Oxford: Clarendon Press
2. ^ a b c d Diggle, James, et al., eds. (2021), The Cambridge Greek Lexicon, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press
3. ^ a b c d e f g h i 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 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
6. ^ a b c Hesychius of Alexandria, Lexicon, ed. Kurt Latte (Α–Ο, Copenhagen 1953–1966) and Moritz Schmidt (Π–Ω, Jena 1858–1868)
7. ^ Keersmaekers, Alek (2021–2025), GLAUx: The Greek Language Automated corpus, https://github.com/alekkeersmaekers/glaux
8. ^ a b Rodríguez Adrados, Francisco, et al., eds. (1980–), Diccionario Griego-Español, Madrid: CSIC, http://dge.cchs.csic.es/xdge