στοχαστικός

Forms

στοχᾰστῐκός (stokhastikós) m (feminine στοχᾰστῐκή, neuter στοχᾰστῐκόν); first/second declension^[1]

Etymology

It is formed from Ancient Greek στοχάζομαι (stokházomai, “to aim at; to guess”) + -τικός (-tikós).^[2][3] The verb comes from στόχος (stókhos, “aim, target”).^[1]

Earliest recorded meaning

It is first found in Plato: in the Gorgias rhetoric is said to need a mind good at guessing, and in the Philebus the art of conjecture is set against the exact arts.^[4][5][6]

Semantic evolution

Aristotle used it of what aims at a goal: virtue aims at the mean, and good deliberation at the best.^[4][5] Philodemus contrasted the conjectural sciences with the fixed ones, and the Stoics and Galen spoke of conjectural arts and a conjectural diagnosis.^[4] Marcus Aurelius used it for consideration for the wishes of friends, and in rhetoric it named questions of conjecture.^[4][2]

Modern Greek στοχαστικός (stochastikós) continues the ancient word in the sense “thoughtful, reflective”.^[3][7] A second, learned στοχαστικός of statistics, “random”, was made anew from the stem of στοχάζομαι in its Hellenistic sense “to calculate”.^[3][7]

Timeline

• 5th–4th century BC – Plato uses it of a mind good at guessing and of the art of conjecture.^[4][5]
• 4th century BC – Aristotle says that virtue aims at the mean.^[4][5]
• 1st century BC – Philodemus contrasts the conjectural sciences with the fixed ones.^[4][8]
• 2nd century AD – Galen speaks of a conjectural diagnosis, and Marcus Aurelius uses it of consideration for friends.^[4][8]
• Modern Greek – It means “thoughtful”, and a learned homonym means “random” in statistics.^[3]

Meanings

Adjective

1. Aiming at, able to hit (with a genitive of the goal).^[4][5]
2. Good at guessing, sagacious, intuitive.^[4][5]
3. Proceeding by guesswork, conjectural; as a feminine noun, the art of conjecture.^[4][5][2]
4. Considerate of the wishes of others.^[4]

Related words

• στόχος (stókhos)
• στοχάζομαι (stokházomai)

References

1. ^ a b c d e Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c Bailly, Anatole (2020), Dictionnaire grec-français, Bailly 2020 Hugo Chávez ed., ed. Gérard Gréco et al.
3. ^ a b c d Ινστιτούτο Νεοελληνικών Σπουδών (Ίδρυμα Μανόλη Τριανταφυλλίδη) (1998), Λεξικό της κοινής νεοελληνικής, Thessaloniki: Aristotle University of Thessaloniki
4. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l Liddell, Henry George; Scott, Robert; Jones, Henry Stuart (1940), A Greek-English Lexicon, 9th ed., Oxford: Clarendon Press
5. ^ a b c d e f g Diggle, James, et al., eds. (2021), The Cambridge Greek Lexicon, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press
6. ^ Keersmaekers, Alek (2021–2025), GLAUx: The Greek Language Automated corpus, https://github.com/alekkeersmaekers/glaux
7. ^ a b Πάπυρος–Larousse–Britannica, Μέγα Λεξικό της Ελληνικής Γλώσσας, Athens: Πάπυρος
8. ^ a b Rodríguez Adrados, Francisco, et al., eds. (1980–), Diccionario Griego-Español, Madrid: CSIC, http://dge.cchs.csic.es/xdge