ψιλός

Pronunciation

• 5th-century BC Attic: /psiː.lós/^[1]
• 4th-century AD Koine: /psiˈlos/^[1]
• 10th-century Byzantine: /psiˈlos/^[1]

Forms

ψῑλός (psīlós) m (feminine ψῑλή, neuter ψῑλόν); first/second declension^[1]

Etymology

The origin is unknown.^[2][1] Beekes finds semantic parallels in the large family of ψῆν (psên, “to rub”), but the formation, compare ψωλός (psōlós), remains unclear, and he also compares ψίω (psíō).^[2] Wiktionary suggests a link with ψάω (psáō, “to rub, wipe”), which would make it Pre-Greek.^[1] Babiniotis sets up a stem with the suffix -λός (-lós), as in χωλός (khōlós).^[3]

Philoxenus, in the 1st century BC, derived it from the verb “to wipe”, as something from which everything has been wiped off.^[4]

Earliest recorded meaning

Homer uses it of land that is bare, open ploughland in the Iliad, of a deer's hide stripped of hair, and of a ship's bare keel in the Odyssey.^[5][2]

Semantic evolution

In Herodotus it is treeless land, and after him the word is common in prose as the military term for light troops, archers and slingers without heavy armour, opposed to hoplites.^[5] With the genitive it meant “stripped of”, and in Plato the soul “bare of the body”.^[5]

Plato and later critics call prose “bare speech”, language without metre, and use it of epic poetry without music, while Aristotle speaks of instrumental music without voice.^[5][1] Grammarians used it for a vowel with the smooth breathing, for an unaspirated consonant, and for ⟨ε⟩ and ⟨υ⟩ written with single letters.^[1][6] Its derivatives give the grammatical term for the loss of aspiration.^[2]

In Medieval Greek it came to mean “thin, fine”, the main sense of Modern Greek ψιλός (psilós), used of thread, rain or a high voice.^[7] Modern legal Greek uses it for bare ownership, after French nue-propriété.^[7]

Timeline

• Homer – The Iliad and the Odyssey use it of bare land, a hairless hide and a bare keel.^[5]
• 5th century BC – Herodotus first uses it of light-armed troops.^[5][8]
• 5th–4th century BC – Plato uses it of prose and of poetry without music.^[5][8]
• 4th century BC – Aristotle uses it of instrumental music.^[5][8]
• Medieval Greek – It takes the sense “thin, fine”.^[7]

Meanings

Adjective

1. Of land, bare, treeless, open.^[5][9]
2. Of animals and people, stripped of hair or feathers, smooth, bald.^[5][2]
3. Uncovered, naked, and with the genitive, stripped of something.^[5]
4. (military) Lightly armed; as a noun, light troops.^[5][1]
5. Of language, without metre, prose; of poetry, without music; of music, without singing.^[5][1]
6. (grammar) With the smooth breathing, unaspirated.^[1][6]

Word family

• ψιλή (psīlḗ)
• ψιλογραφέω (psīlographéō)
• ψιλόν (psīlón)
• ψιλότης (psīlótēs)
• ψιλόω (psīlóō)
• ψίλωσις (psī́lōsis)

References

1. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e 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. ^ Babiniotis, Georgios (2010), Ετυμολογικό λεξικό της νέας ελληνικής γλώσσας [Etymological Dictionary of Modern Greek], Athens: Κέντρο Λεξικολογίας
4. ^ Etygram: ancient etymologies of Greek words, CEPAM, Université Côte d'Azur, http://appsweb-cepam.unice.fr/etygram
5. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m Liddell, Henry George; Scott, Robert; Jones, Henry Stuart (1940), A Greek-English Lexicon, 9th ed., Oxford: Clarendon Press
6. ^ a b Korinthios, J. (2025), Grande Dizionario Greco Classico: Greco–Italiano, digital ed., Milan: Hoepli
7. ^ a b c Ινστιτούτο Νεοελληνικών Σπουδών (Ίδρυμα Μανόλη Τριανταφυλλίδη) (1998), Λεξικό της κοινής νεοελληνικής, Thessaloniki: Aristotle University of Thessaloniki
8. ^ a b c Rodríguez Adrados, Francisco, et al., eds. (1980–), Diccionario Griego-Español, Madrid: CSIC, http://dge.cchs.csic.es/xdge
9. ^ Diggle, James, et al., eds. (2021), The Cambridge Greek Lexicon, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press