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φακός

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Etymology and origin of the Ancient Greek word φακός

Confidence
Disputed
First attested
7th–6th century BC, Solon

Pronunciation

  • 5th-century BC Attic: /pʰa.kós/[1]
  • 4th-century AD Koine: /ɸaˈkos/[1]
  • 10th-century Byzantine: /faˈkos/[1]

Forms

φᾰκός (phakós) m (genitive φᾰκοῦ); second declension[1]

Etymology

Frisk calls it a cultural word of uncertain origin.[2] It agrees in sound and meaning with Albanian bathë (“broad bean”), from an earlier *bʰaḱ-, and its first syllable recurs in Latin faba (“bean”), Proto-Slavic *bòbъ (“bean”) and Proto-Germanic *baunō (“bean”).[3][2][1] The ending recalls that of ἄρακος (árakos, “a kind of vetch”) and ἀμάρακος (amárakos), where a borrowed suffix -κο- has been seen.[4][2][5] Beekes thinks it is possibly Pre-Greek, if ἀφάκη (aphákē, “vetch”) is related.[3][1] Chantraine concludes that nothing is certain.[4]

Rosół separates the name of the flask, which he thinks may be a Semitic loan from the Hebrew word for a small jug, which the Septuagint renders by φακός.[6] He rejects Lewy's Semitic etymology for the lentil itself.[6]

Earliest recorded meaning

The first record is in Solon, meaning lentils as food.[7][8][5]

Semantic evolution

The lentil was mostly eaten as soup: the plural meant lentil soup in Pherecrates and Amphis, and the Septuagint's Genesis has a boiled dish of lentils.[7][4] Because of the shape of the seed, the word was used from the Hippocratic writers on for lentil-shaped things: a flat flask or hot-water bottle, an oil flask in the Septuagint, a mole or freckle on the skin (in papyri from the 3rd century BC), duckweed in Dioscorides, and an ornament on beds.[7][4][5] The same polysemy of “seed” and “freckle” is recorded for other languages.[9] Coptic borrowed it as ⲫⲁⲕⲟⲥ (phakos).[10]

In Modern Greek the vegetable is φακή (fakí), and φακός (fakós) is a learned word for an optical lens, a sense taken from French lentille, and for a torch, from the shape of its glass.[11][5]

Timeline

  • 7th–6th century BC – Solon mentions lentils.[7][5][12]
  • 5th century BC – Herodotus uses it for lentils, and the Hippocratic writers for a pottery flask.[7][13][12]
  • 3rd century BC – Papyri use it for a mole or birthmark.[7][4]
  • 1st century AD – Dioscorides uses it for duckweed.[7][12]
  • Modern Greek – Modern Greek φακός (fakós) means an optical lens.[11][5]

Meanings

Noun

  1. The lentil, the plant and its seed; in the plural, lentil soup.[7][8][4]
  2. Duckweed.[7]
  3. A lentil-shaped flask, a hot-water bottle or an oil flask.[7][4]
  4. A mole, freckle or birthmark.[7][4]
  5. A lentil-shaped ornament on beds.[7][4]

Word family

  • φακῆ (phakê)
  • φακέα (phakéa)
  • φακεψός (phakepsós)
  • φάκινος (phákinos)
  • φάκιον (phákion)
  • φακοειδής (phakoeidḗs)
  • ἀφάκη (aphákē)
  • φάσηλος (phásēlos)
  • Latin faba
  • Latin lēns

References

  1. ^ a b c d e f Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
  2. ^ a b c Frisk, Hjalmar (1960–1972), Griechisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3 vols, Heidelberg: Carl Winter
  3. ^ a b 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 h i 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 Babiniotis, Georgios (2010), Ετυμολογικό λεξικό της νέας ελληνικής γλώσσας [Etymological Dictionary of Modern Greek], Athens: Κέντρο Λεξικολογίας
  6. ^ a b Rosół, Rafał (2013), Frühe semitische Lehnwörter im Griechischen, Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang
  7. ^ 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
  8. ^ a b Diggle, James, et al., eds. (2021), The Cambridge Greek Lexicon, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press
  9. ^ Zalizniak, Anna A., et al. (2024), Database of Semantic Shifts (DatSemShift), Moscow: Institute of Linguistics, Russian Academy of Sciences, https://datsemshift.ru
  10. ^ Database and Dictionary of Greek Loanwords in Coptic (DDGLC), Freie Universität Berlin and Universität Leipzig
  11. ^ a b Ινστιτούτο Νεοελληνικών Σπουδών (Ίδρυμα Μανόλη Τριανταφυλλίδη) (1998), Λεξικό της κοινής νεοελληνικής, Thessaloniki: Aristotle University of Thessaloniki
  12. ^ a b c Rodríguez Adrados, Francisco, et al., eds. (1980–), Diccionario Griego-Español, Madrid: CSIC, http://dge.cchs.csic.es/xdge
  13. ^ Keersmaekers, Alek (2021–2025), GLAUx: The Greek Language Automated corpus, https://github.com/alekkeersmaekers/glaux
Cite this entry

“Φακός.” Etymologically, 25 Oct. 2026, etymologically.com/grc/%CF%86%CE%B1%CE%BA%CF%8C%CF%82. Accessed 25 Oct. 2026.

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