χιτών

Forms

χῐτών (khitṓn) m (genitive χῐτῶνος); third declension^[1] Ionic prose κιθών (kithṓn), Doric κιτών (kitṓn), Aeolic κίθων (kíthōn).^[2][3][4] Mycenaean Greek ki-to, plural Mycenaean Greek ki-to-ne.^[4][5]

Etymology

It is a Semitic loanword, most probably borrowed from Phoenician ktn (“linen garment”).^[4][6][3] Mycenaean Greek ki-to shows that the word was borrowed early.^[1][4] The Semitic word, seen in Aramaic כִּיתּוּנָא (kittōnā, “tunic”) and Biblical Hebrew כֻּתֹּנֶת (kuttṓnĕṯ, “tunic”), is derived from the word for flax, Akkadian kitûm.^[1] Chantraine calls the loan certain.^[4] The aspirates vary between the forms: κιθών (kithṓn) shows a metathesis of the aspiration, and κιτών (kitṓn) and χιθών (khithṓn) are crosses of the two.^[6] Furnée instead took it for an Anatolian culture word, and Beekes asks whether the variants point to Pre-Greek.^[6]

Latin tunica is probably from the same Semitic source.^[6][1] The Etymologicum Magnum derived it from χέω (khéō, “to pour”), since the tunic is “poured” round the body.^[7]

Earliest recorded meaning

Mycenaean tablets from Knossos record ki-to, a man's linen garment.^[5][4] In Homer the χιτών is a man's tunic worn next to the skin, sometimes girdled, as when Odysseus puts on his tunic and cloak.^[2][8]

Semantic evolution

In early times the χιτών was a man's garment, the woman's being the πέπλος (péplos).^[2][4] Women wore it from Sappho on, and in the first half of the 6th century BC it came into fashion for women and later replaced the peplos.^[3][9] Herodotus has the Ionian linen tunic that the Athenian women adopted, fastened without pins.^[2] It was first of linen and later of wool.^[9] Homer and Herodotus also use the word for a coat of armour, and Empedocles calls the body the garment of the soul.^[3][2] Xenophon uses it for the upper of a shoe.^[3]

In the Septuagint it translates the Hebrew word for the tunic, worn by men, women and priests, and in the New Testament it is the undergarment, distinguished from the outer ἱμάτιον (himátion).^[10][11][12] Modern Greek χιτώνας (chitónas) is a learned revival: the ancient tunic, and in anatomy a membrane that surrounds an organ.^[13][14] English took chiton from Latin as the name of a mollusc genus in 1816, and for the Greek tunic from 1850.^[15]

Timeline

• Mycenaean – Knossos tablets record ki-to, a linen garment.^[5][4]
• Homer – The Iliad and the Odyssey use it for a man's tunic and for a coat of armour.^[2][3][8]
• 7th–6th century BC – Sappho uses it of a woman's garment.^[3][4][16]
• 5th century BC – Herodotus describes the Ionian linen tunic of Athenian women.^[2][16]
• 5th–4th century BC – Xenophon uses it for the upper of a shoe.^[3][16]
• 1st century AD – The New Testament contrasts it with the outer garment.^[12][11]
• 1816 – English chiton names a genus of molluscs.^[15]

Meanings

Noun

1. A tunic, a garment worn next to the skin, at first by men, later also by women.^[2][3][12]
2. (figurative) A covering or garment; of the body as the clothing of the soul.^[3]
3. A corslet, a coat of mail.^[3][2]
4. The upper of a shoe.^[3]

Word family

• χαλκοχίτων (khalkokhítōn)
• χιτώνιον (khitṓnion)

Related words

• Latin tunica
• English chiton

References

1. ^ a b c d e f g Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f g h i Liddell, Henry George; Scott, Robert; Jones, Henry Stuart (1940), A Greek-English Lexicon, 9th ed., Oxford: Clarendon Press
3. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l Diggle, James, et al., eds. (2021), The Cambridge Greek Lexicon, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press
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 Микенско-русский словарь (Mycenaean–Russian dictionary)
6. ^ a b c d 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
7. ^ Gaisford, Thomas, ed. (1848), Etymologicum Magnum, Oxford: Oxford University Press
8. ^ a b Cunliffe, Richard John (1924), A Lexicon of the Homeric Dialect, London: Blackie and Son
9. ^ a b Cancik, Hubert; Schneider, Helmuth, eds. (2002–2010), Brill's New Pauly: Encyclopaedia of the Ancient World, Leiden: Brill
10. ^ Lust, Johan; Eynikel, Erik; Hauspie, Katrin (2003), Greek-English Lexicon of the Septuagint, rev. ed., Stuttgart: Deutsche Bibelgesellschaft
11. ^ a b Abbott-Smith, G. (1922), A Manual Greek Lexicon of the New Testament, Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark
12. ^ a b c Bauer, Walter; Danker, Frederick W., et al. (2000), A Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament and Other Early Christian Literature, 3rd ed., Chicago: University of Chicago Press
13. ^ Ινστιτούτο Νεοελληνικών Σπουδών (Ίδρυμα Μανόλη Τριανταφυλλίδη) (1998), Λεξικό της κοινής νεοελληνικής, Thessaloniki: Aristotle University of Thessaloniki
14. ^ Babiniotis, Georgios (2010), Ετυμολογικό λεξικό της νέας ελληνικής γλώσσας [Etymological Dictionary of Modern Greek], Athens: Κέντρο Λεξικολογίας
15. ^ a b Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
16. ^ a b c Rodríguez Adrados, Francisco, et al., eds. (1980–), Diccionario Griego-Español, Madrid: CSIC, http://dge.cchs.csic.es/xdge