τύρσις

Pronunciation

• 4th-century AD Koine: /ˈtyr.sis/^[1]
• 10th-century Byzantine: /ˈtyr.sis/^[1]

Forms

τύρσις (túrsis) f (genitive τύρσιος, also τύρσιδος; plural τύρσεις); third declension^[2] Hesychius records the forms τύρρις (túrrhis) and τύρσος (túrsos), glossed as a tower or a building standing high.^[3][4]

Etymology

Beekes considers it a loanword from a Mediterranean language, from Pre-Greek, following Kretschmer, and lists it among the Pre-Greek words for buildings.^[3][5] Frisk also takes it, like Latin turris, from a Mediterranean language, and compares πύργος (púrgos), another loanword for “tower”.^[6]

Chantraine sees a probable borrowing parallel to the Latin word and Oscan tiurri (though the Oscan word may come from Latin and the Latin one from Greek), but thinks the source was an Indo-European language.^[4] Attempts of this kind compare the “Illyrian” place name Βουδοργίς (Boudorgís) and the Lydian town name Τύρρα (Túrrha) or Τύρσα (Túrsa), from which the ethnic name Τυρσηνοί (Tursēnoí) (the Etruscans) would be derived, while Heubeck started from Proto-Indo-European *dʰergʰ-, a root meaning “firm, solid”.^[4][6] Frisk and Beekes refer to these proposals without accepting them.^[6][3]

Earliest recorded meaning

The first text with the word is Pindar's second Olympian, where the “tower of Kronos” stands on the Isles of the Blessed.^[7][2][8]

Semantic evolution

In Classical prose it is mostly a tower on a city wall or a house, a turret or bastion: Xenophon uses it so in the Anabasis, the Hellenica and the Cyropaedia.^[2][7][8] The Hippocratic treatise On Joints also has it.^[2] Hellenistic poets used it for a walled town or a fortified house, and an inscription from Amorgos of the 2nd–1st century BC uses it for a fortified farmhouse in the countryside.^[2][4] Josephus distinguishes it from the battlement.^[2]

Latin turris was borrowed from the form τύρρις, according to LSJ and Saalfeld,^[2][9] and Latin passed it on to the Romance languages (French tour) and to Germanic (German Turm).^[4][6]

Timeline

• 6th–5th century BC – Pindar speaks of the tower of Kronos.^[7][2][10]
• 5th century BC – The Hippocratic On Joints uses the word.^[2][10]
• 5th–4th century BC – Xenophon uses it for towers on walls.^[2][7][10]
• 2nd–1st century BC – An inscription from Amorgos uses it for a fortified country house.^[2][4]

Meanings

Noun

1. A tower.^[2][7]
2. A tower on a wall or a house, a turret or bastion.^[2][7]
3. A walled town or a fortified house; a fortified farmhouse.^[2][4]

Related words

• πύργος (púrgos)
• Latin turris

References

1. ^ a b Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n Liddell, Henry George; Scott, Robert; Jones, Henry Stuart (1940), A Greek-English Lexicon, 9th ed., Oxford: Clarendon Press
3. ^ 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
4. ^ a b c d e f g 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. ^ Beekes, Robert S. P. (2014), Pre-Greek: Phonology, Morphology, Lexicon, ed. Stefan Norbruis, Leiden; Boston: Brill
6. ^ a b c d Frisk, Hjalmar (1960–1972), Griechisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3 vols, Heidelberg: Carl Winter
7. ^ a b c d e f Diggle, James, et al., eds. (2021), The Cambridge Greek Lexicon, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press
8. ^ a b Keersmaekers, Alek (2021–2025), GLAUx: The Greek Language Automated corpus, https://github.com/alekkeersmaekers/glaux
9. ^ Saalfeld, Günther Alexander (1874), Index Graecorum vocabulorum in linguam latinam translatorum, Berlin: Weidmann
10. ^ a b c Rodríguez Adrados, Francisco, et al., eds. (1980–), Diccionario Griego-Español, Madrid: CSIC, http://dge.cchs.csic.es/xdge