χελιδών

Pronunciation

• 5th-century BC Attic: /kʰe.liː.dɔ̌ːn/^[1]
• 4th-century AD Koine: /çe.liˈðon/^[1]
• 10th-century Byzantine: /çe.liˈðon/^[1]

Forms

χελῑδών (khelīdṓn) f (genitive χελῑδόνος); third declension^[1]

Etymology

Beekes considers it Pre-Greek, because of the Pre-Greek suffix -ῑδ- (compare ψηφίς (psēphís), κνημίς (knēmís)).^[2][3] Furnée assumes a Mediterranean origin, shared with Latin hirundō (“swallow”).^[3][1] A link with Proto-Indo-European *gʰel- (“to cry out”), seen in reduplicated κίχλη (kíkhlē, “thrush”) and Old High German gellan (“to cry”), does not convince Beekes.^[2][1]

The woman's name Χελιδϝον (Khelidwon) in an inscription from Thermos seems to show a suffix -ϝον- (-won-), but such a suffix after a consonant would be unique in alphabetic Greek, so Beekes and Frisk take the ⟨ϝ⟩ as a false archaism.^[2][4] Babiniotis also rejects that suffix.^[5]

Earliest recorded meaning

It is found from Homer on, in the Odyssey, meaning the swallow, and Hesiod has it too; the bird was the harbinger of spring.^[6][7][2]

Semantic evolution

The swallow's twitter was the Greeks' image of foreign speech: in Aeschylus' Agamemnon a foreign woman is thought to speak an unknown barbarian tongue “like a swallow”, and in Aristophanes the swallow stands for a foreigner, and swallows for bad tragic poets.^[6][7] A white swallow was a rare event (Theophrastus).^[6] By resemblance the word named the flying fish and, in Xenophon, the frog of a horse's hoof.^[6][7][2]

The Hellenistic diminutive χελιδόνιον (khelīdónion) became Modern Greek χελιδόνι (chelidóni).^[8][5]

Timeline

• Homer – The Odyssey uses it of the swallow.^[6][7]
• Before the 6th century BC – Hesiod uses it of the swallow.^[6][9]
• 6th–5th century BC – Aeschylus compares unintelligible foreign speech to a swallow's twitter.^[6][7][9]
• 5th century BC – Cratinus records the proverb that one swallow does not make a spring.^[6][9]
• 5th–4th century BC – Xenophon uses it for the frog of a horse's hoof.^[7][9]
• 4th century BC – Aristotle uses it for the flying fish.^[6][2][9]
• Modern Greek – The diminutive χελιδόνι has replaced it.^[8][5]

Meanings

Noun

1. The swallow, the herald of spring.^[6][7]
2. (figurative) A barbarian, a speaker of an unintelligible tongue; a poor poet.^[6][7]
3. The flying fish.^[6][2]
4. The frog in the hollow of a horse's hoof.^[6][7]

Word family

• χελιδόνιον (khelīdónion)
• χελιδόνιος (khelīdónios)

Usage notes

“One swallow does not make a spring”: the proverb is in Cratinus and Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics.^[6]

References

1. ^ a b c d e f Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f g 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 Beekes, Robert S. P. (2014), Pre-Greek: Phonology, Morphology, Lexicon, ed. Stefan Norbruis, Leiden; Boston: Brill
4. ^ Frisk, Hjalmar (1960–1972), Griechisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3 vols, Heidelberg: Carl Winter
5. ^ a b c Babiniotis, Georgios (2010), Ετυμολογικό λεξικό της νέας ελληνικής γλώσσας [Etymological Dictionary of Modern Greek], Athens: Κέντρο Λεξικολογίας
6. ^ 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
7. ^ a b c d e f g h i Diggle, James, et al., eds. (2021), The Cambridge Greek Lexicon, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press
8. ^ a b Ινστιτούτο Νεοελληνικών Σπουδών (Ίδρυμα Μανόλη Τριανταφυλλίδη) (1998), Λεξικό της κοινής νεοελληνικής, Thessaloniki: Aristotle University of Thessaloniki
9. ^ a b c d e Rodríguez Adrados, Francisco, et al., eds. (1980–), Diccionario Griego-Español, Madrid: CSIC, http://dge.cchs.csic.es/xdge