ἀμυγδάλη
Pronunciation
- IPA (5th-century BC Attic): /a.myɡ.dá.lɛː/[1]
- IPA (4th-century AD Koine): /a.myɣˈða.li/[1]
- IPA (10th-century Byzantine): /a.myɣˈða.li/[1]
Forms
ᾰ̓μῠγδᾰ́λη (amugdálē) f (genitive ᾰ̓μῠγδᾰ́λης); first declension[1] Also neuter ἀμύγδαλον and feminine ἀμύγδαλος (Lucian); Doric ἀμυσγέλα (Cyrene, 3rd century BC), also ἀμυσγύλα.[2][3][1] ἀμυγδαλέα (amugdaléa), contracted ἀμυγδαλῆ, the almond tree.[2][3]
Etymology
It is a typical substrate word, from Pre-Greek, according to Beekes and the DGE.[2][3][4] The interchange of -γδ- with -σγ- (ἀμυσγέλα) is a Pre-Greek feature, and the Homeric epithet of Lemnos ἀμιχθαλόεσσα, which Leumann and Beekes take as “rich in almonds”, is another variant.[2][4] Frisk calls it a foreign word of unknown origin.[5]
Furnée compared μύκηρος (múkēros, “almond”) and Hittite mitgaimi- (“sweet bread”), Luwian mitgaimi- “sweetened”.[2][1] Older Semitic etymologies, such as Hebrew “great mother” or “precious gift of God”, are rejected by Rosół.[6] Blažek has proposed a link with Hebrew שָׁקֵד (šāqēḏ, “almond”).[6][1][7]
Earliest recorded meaning
The comic poet Phrynichus and an Athenian inscription of about 414 BC mention almonds.[8][9]
Semantic evolution
Comedy, the Hippocratic writers, Theophrastus and Dioscorides use it for the nut.[3][8] Eupolis has “give him Naxian almonds to chew”.[3][8][10][11] The grammarians distinguished the fruit, ἀμυγδάλη, from the tree, ἀμυγδαλῆ.[10] Later it also meant the kernel of a peach stone (Geoponica).[8][3]
Latin borrowed it as amygdala, with popular forms amiddula, amyndala and amandula, from which come Old High German mandala, German Mandel, French amande and English almond.[2][5][9][7] Modern Greek uses αμύγδαλο for the nut; Modern Greek αμυγδαλή (amygdalí) means the tonsils, a sense taken from French amygdale.[7][12]
Timeline
- 5th century BC – Phrynichus and Eupolis mention almonds.[8][3]
- c. 414 BC – an Athenian inscription lists almonds.[9]
- 4th–3rd century BC – Theophrastus describes the almond tree and its fruit.[8][3]
- 3rd century BC – the Doric form ἀμυσγέλα at Cyrene.[3]
- Modern Greek – αμύγδαλο “almond”; αμυγδαλές “tonsils”.[7][12]
Meanings
Noun
Word family
- ἀμυγδάλινος (amugdálinos)
- ἀμυγδαλέα (amugdaléa)
- ἀμυγδάλιον (amugdálion)
Related words
- Latin amygdala
- English almond
- English amygdala
Usage notes
Ammonius distinguishes ἀμυγδαλῆ, with a circumflex, for the tree, from ἀμυγδάλη for the fruit.[10]
References
- ^ a b c d e f g Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
- ^ 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
- ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l Rodríguez Adrados, Francisco, et al., eds. (1980–), Diccionario Griego-Español, Madrid: CSIC, http://dge.cchs.csic.es/xdge
- ^ a b Beekes, Robert S. P. (2014), Pre-Greek: Phonology, Morphology, Lexicon, ed. Stefan Norbruis, Leiden; Boston: Brill
- ^ a b Frisk, Hjalmar (1960–1972), Griechisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3 vols, Heidelberg: Carl Winter
- ^ a b Rosół, Rafał (2013), Frühe semitische Lehnwörter im Griechischen, Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang
- ^ a b c d Πάπυρος–Larousse–Britannica, Μέγα Λεξικό της Ελληνικής Γλώσσας, Athens: Πάπυρος
- ^ 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
- ^ a b c Scarborough, Matthew (2025), PHILOGLOSSA: database of Pre-Greek and other non-Indo-European words in Ancient Greek, version 1.0
- ^ a b c [Ammonius], De adfinium vocabulorum differentia, ed. K. Nickau (Leipzig: Teubner, 1966)
- ^ a b Diggle, James, et al., eds. (2021), The Cambridge Greek Lexicon, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press
- ^ a b Ινστιτούτο Νεοελληνικών Σπουδών (Ίδρυμα Μανόλη Τριανταφυλλίδη) (1998), Λεξικό της κοινής νεοελληνικής, Thessaloniki: Aristotle University of Thessaloniki