ἄπιον

Forms

ᾰ̓́πῐον (ápion) n (genitive ᾰ̓πῐ́ου); second declension^[1]

Etymology

Beekes, Chantraine and Frisk take it for a loanword from a Mediterranean language of unknown origin, the same source as Latin pirum (“pear”) and pirus (“pear tree”).^[2][3][4][5] Wiktionary and Chantraine reconstruct a borrowed stem in ⟨-pis-⟩.^[1][3] The initial ⟨ἀ-⟩ is the difficulty: Kretschmer took it for a prothetic vowel or a Pre-Greek prefix.^[3][4][2]

Two other proposals have found no favour: Berger compared a Burushaski word, which Beekes finds improbable, and Steinbauer derived it from Proto-Indo-European *h₂pis-o-, which Beekes finds even less likely.^[2]

Earliest recorded meaning

LSJ's first passage is Plato's Laws, where it means a pear, the fruit.^[6][7] The GLAUx corpus also finds it in a gynaecological treatise of the Hippocratic corpus.^[8]

Semantic evolution

The neuter ἄπιον is the fruit, and the feminine ἄπιος (ápios) the tree, but writers do not always keep the two apart: Theophrastus once uses ἄπιον for the tree, and the feminine sometimes means the fruit.^[2][3][6] The cultivated pear was distinguished from the wild pear, ἄχερδος (ákherdos).^[3] The lexica list ἀχράς (akhrás) and ὄγχνη (ónkhnē) as its synonyms.^[9]

In Hellenistic and Roman times the word occurs in Theocritus and the medical writers, Dioscorides and Galen.^[6][8] An ostracon uses it for a measure of wine.^[7] It was taken into scientific Latin as the plant genus name Apion.^[1]

Timeline

• 5th–4th century BC – Plato's Laws uses it for the pear.^[6][7]
• 4th–3rd century BC – Theophrastus uses it for the pear and once for the pear tree, and Theocritus has it in his Idylls.^[6][3][7]
• 1st–2nd century AD – Dioscorides and Galen use it in medical writing.^[8][7]

Meanings

Noun

1. A pear, the fruit.^[6][10][7]
2. The pear tree, the same as ἄπιος (ápios).^[6][3]
3. (ostraca) A measure of wine.^[7]

Related words

• ἄπιος (ápios)
• Latin pirum

Usage notes

A separate ἄπιον is Latin apium (“celery”) in Greek letters, in a papyrus and in Oribasius (who spells it ἄποιον).^[9][11]

References

1. ^ a b c d e f Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ 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
3. ^ a b c d e f g 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
4. ^ a b Frisk, Hjalmar (1960–1972), Griechisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3 vols, Heidelberg: Carl Winter
5. ^ Köbler, Gerhard, Griechisch-deutsches Wörterbuch, online ed., https://www.koeblergerhard.de
6. ^ a b c d e f g 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 Rodríguez Adrados, Francisco, et al., eds. (1980–), Diccionario Griego-Español, Madrid: CSIC, http://dge.cchs.csic.es/xdge
8. ^ a b c Keersmaekers, Alek (2021–2025), GLAUx: The Greek Language Automated corpus, https://github.com/alekkeersmaekers/glaux
9. ^ a b Charbonnet, André (2025), Chæréphon, v4.7: supplement to Bailly from papyri, inscriptions and recent lexica
10. ^ Diggle, James, et al., eds. (2021), The Cambridge Greek Lexicon, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press
11. ^ Pape, Wilhelm (1914), Griechisch-deutsches Handwörterbuch, 3rd ed., rev. Max Sengebusch, Braunschweig: Vieweg