Etymologically
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τύμπανον

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Pronunciation

  • 5th-century BC Attic: /tým.pa.non/[1]
  • 4th-century AD Koine: /ˈtym.pa.non/[1]
  • 10th-century Byzantine: /ˈtym.pa.non/[1]

Forms

τῠ́μπᾰνον (túmpanon) n (genitive τῠμπᾰ́νου); second declension[1]

Etymology

Its origin is disputed.[2][3] It looks like a Greek word with the suffix -ανον (-anon) of instrument names such as ὄργανον (órganon), and the ancients derived it from τύπτω (túptō, “to strike, beat”), whence the spelling τύπανον (túpanon).[4][2] In that view the nasal would be a secondary addition.[2][4] Others take it as a Semitic loanword, comparing Biblical Hebrew תֹּף (top, “drum”) and Aramaic forms meaning “to beat the drum”, adapted by folk etymology to the verb and to the instrument names.[2][1][3] The Septuagint lexicon of Lust also calls it a Semitic loan.[5] Since the drum belonged to the cults of the Mother of the Gods and of Dionysus, Furnée looked for its source in Asia Minor.[2]

Beekes himself counts it among the words of Pre-Greek origin, because of the variation between forms with and without a nasal (prenasalization) and the suffix -αν-.[6][2]

Earliest recorded meaning

It is first found in the Homeric Hymns, as the name of a kettledrum or hand drum.[2][4][7]

Semantic evolution

The drum was of eastern origin: it was held in the left hand and struck with the right, mostly by women, and almost only in orgiastic rites such as those of Cybele, Dionysus and Sabazios.[7][8] Euripides makes Dionysus call drums the invention of Mother Rhea and himself.[8]

From the shape of the drum the word came to name other things: an instrument of execution or torture on which the victim was stretched, in Aristophanes and Aristotle;[7][8] the drum or wheel of a machine and a water wheel, in Polybius, Hero and the papyri;[2][4][8] and, in architecture, the sunken triangular field of a pediment and the panel of a door, which Vitruvius calls by the Latin form.[8] Plutarch uses it of the war drums of a Parthian army.[7] In the Septuagint it is the tambourine of the Hebrew text and, in Second Maccabees, the rack.[5]

It was borrowed as Latin tympanum.[9] It survives as Modern Greek τύμπανο (týmpano), a learned word for the drum; in the sense of the eardrum it renders French tympan, from the Latin word.[10]

Timeline

  • Homeric Hymns – The fourteenth hymn has the earliest instance.[2][4]
  • 5th century BC – Herodotus and Euripides use it for the drum of the orgiastic cults.[8][7][11]
  • 5th–4th century BC – Aristophanes uses it for an instrument of execution.[8][7]
  • 2nd century BC – Polybius uses it for a water wheel.[2][4]
  • 1st–2nd century AD – Plutarch uses it for the war drums of the Parthians.[7]
  • 2nd–3rd century AD – Sextus Empiricus speaks of people led off to the tympanon, the place of execution.[8]
  • Modern Greek – The learned word τύμπανο names the drum and the eardrum.[10]

Meanings

Noun

  1. A kettledrum or hand drum, used above all in the rites of the Mother of the Gods and of Dionysus.[8][7]
  2. A war drum.[7]
  3. (figurative) Inflated, empty eloquence, in the phrase “to blow the drum”.[8]
  4. An instrument of torture or execution; also a cudgel.[8][7]
  5. (mechanics) A drum or wheel in a machine; a water wheel.[8][2]
  6. (architecture) The tympanum of a pediment; the panel of a door.[8]

Word family

  • ἐκτυμπάνωσις (ektumpánōsis)
  • περιτυμπανίζομαι (peritumpanízomai)
  • τυμπανόομαι (tumpanóomai)
  • τυμπανώδης (tumpanṓdēs)

References

  1. ^ a b c d e Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
  2. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k 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 Scarborough, Matthew (2025), PHILOGLOSSA: database of Pre-Greek and other non-Indo-European words in Ancient Greek, version 1.0
  4. ^ a b c d e f 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
  5. ^ a b Lust, Johan; Eynikel, Erik; Hauspie, Katrin (2003), Greek-English Lexicon of the Septuagint, rev. ed., Stuttgart: Deutsche Bibelgesellschaft
  6. ^ Beekes, Robert S. P. (2014), Pre-Greek: Phonology, Morphology, Lexicon, ed. Stefan Norbruis, Leiden; Boston: Brill
  7. ^ a b c d e f g h i j Diggle, James, et al., eds. (2021), The Cambridge Greek Lexicon, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press
  8. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m Liddell, Henry George; Scott, Robert; Jones, Henry Stuart (1940), A Greek-English Lexicon, 9th ed., Oxford: Clarendon Press
  9. ^ Saalfeld, Günther Alexander (1874), Index Graecorum vocabulorum in linguam latinam translatorum, Berlin: Weidmann
  10. ^ a b Ινστιτούτο Νεοελληνικών Σπουδών (Ίδρυμα Μανόλη Τριανταφυλλίδη) (1998), Λεξικό της κοινής νεοελληνικής, Thessaloniki: Aristotle University of Thessaloniki
  11. ^ Keersmaekers, Alek (2021–2025), GLAUx: The Greek Language Automated corpus, https://github.com/alekkeersmaekers/glaux