τόπος

Pronunciation

• IPA (5th-century BC Attic): /tó.pos/^[1]
• IPA (4th-century AD Koine): /ˈto.pos/^[1]
• IPA (10th-century Byzantine): /ˈto.pos/^[1]

Forms

τόπος (tópos) m (genitive τόπου); second declension^[1]

Etymology

It is an everyday word whose broad meaning makes its etymology hard to establish.^[2][3][4] Beekes reconstructs ⟨*top-o-⟩ or ⟨*tokʷ-o-⟩.^[2] A link with Proto-Indo-European *tekʷ- (“to run, flow”) is semantically difficult.^[2][1] De Vaan suggested the root Proto-Indo-European *tep- (“to hit, smear”), seen in Lithuanian tèpti (“to smear”): a “stain, spot” would have become a “spot, place”, as in English spot.^[2][1] Meier-Brügger derived it from *tep- “to be hot”, with “hearth” becoming “any place”.^[2][1] Others have suggested a Pre-Greek origin and compared Albanian tokë (“earth, floor”).^[1] Chantraine compared the parallel semantic range of Latin locus.^[3]

Earliest recorded meaning

It is first found in Aeschylus, in phrases such as “the land of the Greeks” and “towards the western regions”.^[5][2]

Semantic evolution

In Classical prose it is a place, a region or district, as in Isocrates and Demosthenes, and the place something occupies.^[5][6] Parmenides and Plato use it for position.^[5][6] Isocrates and Aeschines use it for the subject of a speech, and Aristotle's Topics for a topic, a commonplace from which arguments are drawn.^[6][2] Polybius uses it for a passage in a book and for opportunity, “room” for pity or defence.^[6]

The Septuagint calls Jerusalem and the Temple “the holy place”, and in the New Testament it is also a burial place, a seat at table and a position in a ministry.^[5][7][6][8] Modern Greek τόπος (tópos) is a place, a country, and one's homeland; its mathematical sense of a locus follows New Latin locus.^[9] English took topos as a literary term in 1948.^[4]

Timeline

• 6th–5th century BC – Aeschylus is the first to use it.^[5][2]
• 5th–4th century BC – Plato uses it for the place a thing occupies.^[6]
• 4th century BC – Isocrates and Aeschines use it for the subject of a speech.^[6]
• 4th century BC – Aristotle uses it for a topic of argument.^[6]
• 2nd century BC – Polybius uses it for a passage in a book and for opportunity.^[6]
• 1948 – English borrows topos.^[4]

Meanings

Noun

1. A place, region, district.^[5][6]
2. The place occupied by someone or something; position, location.^[6][8]
3. (New Testament) A burial place; a place at table.^[6][8]
4. A passage in a book.^[6]
5. A subject or topic, or (rhetoric) a commonplace from which arguments are drawn.^[6][2]
6. Occasion, opportunity, room.^[6][7]
7. (New Testament) A position or office.^[6]

Word family

• ἀτοπία (atopía)
• ἄτοπος (átopos)
• ἐκτοπίζω (ektopízō)
• ἔκτοπος (éktopos)
• ἐντόπιος (entópios)
• τοπάζω (topázō)
• τοπικός (topikós)
• τοπογραφία (topographíā)
• τοποθετέω (topothetéō)

Related words

• ὑποτοπέω (hupotopéō)
• English topos
• English topic

References

1. ^ a b c d e f g h Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ 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
3. ^ a b Frisk, Hjalmar (1960–1972), Griechisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3 vols, Heidelberg: Carl Winter
4. ^ a b c Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
5. ^ a b c d e f Liddell, Henry George; Scott, Robert; Jones, Henry Stuart (1940), A Greek-English Lexicon, 9th ed., Oxford: Clarendon Press
6. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p Diggle, James, et al., eds. (2021), The Cambridge Greek Lexicon, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press
7. ^ a b Lust, Johan; Eynikel, Erik; Hauspie, Katrin (2003), Greek-English Lexicon of the Septuagint, rev. ed., Stuttgart: Deutsche Bibelgesellschaft
8. ^ a b c 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
9. ^ Ινστιτούτο Νεοελληνικών Σπουδών (Ίδρυμα Μανόλη Τριανταφυλλίδη) (1998), Λεξικό της κοινής νεοελληνικής, Thessaloniki: Aristotle University of Thessaloniki