τίγρις

Forms

τῐ́γρῐς (tígris) f (genitive τῐ́γρεως); third declension^[1] The genitive is τίγριος in Aristotle and Theophrastus and τίγριδος in Oppian; the plural is τίγρεις, τίγριδες or τίγριες.^[2] It is feminine in Philemon and Plutarch and masculine in Alexis, Aristotle and Theophrastus.^[2][3]

Etymology

It is an Oriental loanword, taken first from Iranian.^[4][5][3] Varro says the word is Armenian, but Dionysius Periegetes, Eustathius and others call it Median, with the original sense “arrow”.^[4][3] Frisk, Chantraine and Beekes therefore equate it with Avestan tigri- (“arrow”) and Old Persian tigra- (“pointed”), from the root of στίζω (stízō).^[4][5][3] The river name, Old Persian tigrā, was explained the same way: Strabo writes that the Medes call an arrow by this name, and that the river was named for its swiftness.^[3][4] Beekes and Frisk allow that a foreign word may have been adapted to these Iranian words by folk etymology, as the river's other Middle Persian and Akkadian name suggests.^[4][5]

Earliest recorded meaning

It is first recorded in the 4th century BC, in Aristotle's History of Animals and in Alexis, who mentions the tiger that Seleucus sent to Athens.^[2][6][4] According to the New Pauly, the Greeks first learned of the animal through Alexander's campaign.^[7]

Semantic evolution

Chantraine explains the hesitation between the genders by the shape of the word, or perhaps because the animal was not felt to be noble.^[3] Later Greek formed ἱππότιγρις (hippótigris), a large kind of tiger, and τιγροειδής (tigroeidḗs, “striped like a tiger”), both in Dio Cassius.^[3] Latin borrowed the word as Latin tigris.^[8][4]

Modern Greek has the learned τίγρη (tígri) and τίγρης (tígris), from Hellenistic ἡ τίγρις with a change of declension.^[9][10]

Timeline

• 4th century BC – Aristotle describes the tiger, and Alexis mentions the tiger Seleucus sent to Athens.^[2][4]
• 4th–3rd century BC – Theophrastus and Philemon use the word.^[2]
• 2nd–3rd century AD – Dio Cassius uses the plural τίγριδες and the compound ἱππότιγρις (hippótigris).^[2][3]
• Modern Greek – It lives on as the learned τίγρη (tígri).^[9]

Meanings

Noun

1. The tiger.^[2][4]

Related words

• στίζω (stízō)
• Latin tigris

Usage notes

The river Τίγρις (Tígris) is called Τίγρης in Herodotus and Xenophon and Τίγρις in Aristotle, Polybius and Strabo.^[3]

References

1. ^ a b c d Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f g Liddell, Henry George; Scott, Robert; Jones, Henry Stuart (1940), A Greek-English Lexicon, 9th ed., Oxford: Clarendon 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 d e f g h i 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
5. ^ a b c Frisk, Hjalmar (1960–1972), Griechisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3 vols, Heidelberg: Carl Winter
6. ^ Keersmaekers, Alek (2021–2025), GLAUx: The Greek Language Automated corpus, https://github.com/alekkeersmaekers/glaux
7. ^ Cancik, Hubert; Schneider, Helmuth, eds. (2002–2010), Brill's New Pauly: Encyclopaedia of the Ancient World, Leiden: Brill
8. ^ Saalfeld, Günther Alexander (1874), Index Graecorum vocabulorum in linguam latinam translatorum, Berlin: Weidmann
9. ^ a b Ινστιτούτο Νεοελληνικών Σπουδών (Ίδρυμα Μανόλη Τριανταφυλλίδη) (1998), Λεξικό της κοινής νεοελληνικής, Thessaloniki: Aristotle University of Thessaloniki
10. ^ Babiniotis, Georgios (2010), Ετυμολογικό λεξικό της νέας ελληνικής γλώσσας [Etymological Dictionary of Modern Greek], Athens: Κέντρο Λεξικολογίας