τεός

Forms

τεός (teós) m (feminine τεή or τεᾱ́, neuter τεόν); first/second declension^[1] Doric (also in Pindar and the lyric parts of tragedy) feminine τεά (teá); Aeolic τέος (téos), Boeotian accusative plural masculine τιώς (tiṓs).^[2][3]

Etymology

It is inherited from Proto-Hellenic *tewós,^[1] a thematic adjective made from Proto-Indo-European *téwe, the genitive of the second person singular pronoun *túh₂ (“you”).^[1] Beekes explains τεός and its Attic-Ionic counterpart σός (sós) as two forms of one Indo-European possessive, *t(e)wo-: τεός comes from a form with ⟨ϝ⟩ after the full grade, the other from the zero grade.^[4][5] Boeotian τιός (tiós) belongs to the same type.^[4][5]

Cognate with Latin tuus (“your”), which Beekes traces to the same form, Sanskrit त्व (tvá-) and Lithuanian tãvas.^[4][5]

Earliest recorded meaning

It is found from the Iliad on, as the Epic word for “your” addressed to one person, beside σός.^[6][7][2]

Semantic evolution

In Homer and Hesiod τεός stands beside σός as an Epic form.^[2][7] In choral lyric it is the usual possessive: Pindar uses it above all when he addresses gods and heroes (“yours, Zeus, are the Seasons”), and Bacchylides uses it too.^[8][2] Tragedy keeps it in its lyric passages, a Doric colouring of the choral songs, in Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides.^[2][3]

Each dialect had its own form: Aeolic τέος in Alcaeus and Boeotian τιός in Corinna.^[2][3] After the Classical period it survives only in learned Hellenistic poetry, and the ordinary language used σός.^[3]

Timeline

• Homer – The Iliad and the Odyssey use it for “your”, addressed to one person.^[6][7]
• Before the 6th century BC – Hesiod uses it in the Works and Days.^[2][6]
• 7th–6th century BC – Alcaeus has the Aeolic form τέος (téos).^[2]
• 6th–5th century BC – Pindar uses the Doric forms in his odes, mostly addressing gods and heroes.^[8][2]
• 5th century BC – Corinna has the Boeotian accusative plural τιώς (tiṓs), and Sophocles and Euripides use τεός in lyric passages.^[2][3]

Meanings

Pronoun

1. (possessive, Epic, Doric and lyric) Your, yours, belonging to you (one person); the same as σός (sós).^[2][3][7]

Related words

• σύ (sú)
• Latin tuus

Usage notes

In a poem of Praxilla τεός is scanned as one short syllable, and the metrician Hephaestion quotes the line for that reason.^[2]

References

1. ^ a b c d e f Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ 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
3. ^ a b c d e f Diggle, James, et al., eds. (2021), The Cambridge Greek Lexicon, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press
4. ^ a b c 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 Pokorny, Julius (1959), Indogermanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, Bern; Munich: Francke
6. ^ a b c Keersmaekers, Alek (2021–2025), GLAUx: The Greek Language Automated corpus, https://github.com/alekkeersmaekers/glaux
7. ^ a b c d Cunliffe, Richard John (1924), A Lexicon of the Homeric Dialect, London: Blackie and Son
8. ^ a b Slater, William J. (1969), Lexicon to Pindar, Berlin: De Gruyter