τύφη

Forms

τῡ́φη (tū́phē) f (genitive τῡ́φης); first declension^[1]

Etymology

It is inherited from Proto-Hellenic *tū́pʰā.^[1] It is often compared with Latin tūber (“hump, swelling, tumour; truffle”) and with Germanic words such as Old Norse þúfa (“hillock in grassland”) and Old English þūf (“tuft, bunch of feathers”), which may or may not come from Proto-Indo-European *tewh₂- (“to swell”).^[2][1] Frisk treats it as an inherited word with these close relatives, and Chantraine, who sets up *tū-bh- with the same root as τύλη (túlē) and τύμβος (túmbos), thinks the shape of the reed allows the comparison.^[3][4] Beekes, however, finds the meaning of the Greek word too different for the link to be more than a hypothesis, and notes that the length of its /u/ is uncertain.^[2][1]

Earliest recorded meaning

It first appears in Theophrastus' botany, of a marsh plant whose down was used to stuff cushions and beds: the reedmace or cattail, Typha angustata.^[5][2][4]

Semantic evolution

Strabo and Dioscorides use the word for the same plant, and Pseudo-Dioscorides has a variant τύφι (túphi).^[5][2] An adjective τυφήρης (tuphḗrēs), “made of reedmace”, occurs in the Greek Anthology.^[2][4]

The plant name lives on as the botanical genus Typha.^[1] The Modern Greek τύφη (týfi) is a learned word for the same plant.^[6][7]

Timeline

• 4th–3rd century BC – Theophrastus uses it for the reedmace in his Enquiry into Plants.^[5][8]
• 1st century BC to 1st century AD – Strabo mentions the plant.^[5][9][8]
• 1st century AD – Dioscorides describes it in his Materia medica.^[5][9][8]
• 12th century AD – Tzetzes uses τύφη for a kind of tiara, which Chantraine takes as a separate word borrowed from Latin.^[5][4][8]
• Modern Greek – τύφη (týfi) survives as a learned botanical name.^[6]

Meanings

Noun

1. The reedmace or cattail (Typha angustata), whose down was used to stuff bolsters and beds.^[5][2][1]
2. (Byzantine) A kind of tiara or head-covering.^[5][10]

Word family

• τυφήρης (tuphḗrēs)

Related words

• τύλη (túlē)
• τύμβος (túmbos)
• Latin tūber

Usage notes

Chantraine holds that the Byzantine τύφη “head-dress” in Tzetzes is a different word, borrowed from Latin tūfa (“crest of a helmet”), which Latin had taken from Germanic; the same Latin word gave Medieval Greek τοῦφα (toûpha, “plume, crest”).^[4][3]

References

1. ^ a b c d e f g h i Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f 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 d e 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 c d e f g h Liddell, Henry George; Scott, Robert; Jones, Henry Stuart (1940), A Greek-English Lexicon, 9th ed., Oxford: Clarendon Press
6. ^ a b Ινστιτούτο Νεοελληνικών Σπουδών (Ίδρυμα Μανόλη Τριανταφυλλίδη) (1998), Λεξικό της κοινής νεοελληνικής, Thessaloniki: Aristotle University of Thessaloniki
7. ^ Πάπυρος–Larousse–Britannica, Μέγα Λεξικό της Ελληνικής Γλώσσας, Athens: Πάπυρος
8. ^ a b c d Rodríguez Adrados, Francisco, et al., eds. (1980–), Diccionario Griego-Español, Madrid: CSIC, http://dge.cchs.csic.es/xdge
9. ^ a b Keersmaekers, Alek (2021–2025), GLAUx: The Greek Language Automated corpus, https://github.com/alekkeersmaekers/glaux
10. ^ Charbonnet, André (2025), Chæréphon, v4.7: supplement to Bailly from papyri, inscriptions and recent lexica