ἐνιαυτός

Forms

ἐνῐαυτός (eniautós) m (genitive ἐνῐαυτοῦ); second declension^[1]

Etymology

The origin is disputed.^[2][3][4] It was a new expression for the year, properly the “anniversary”.^[2] Its first part seems to be a word for “year” found in δίενος (díenos, “two years old”) and in Hesychius, which may also be in Lithuanian pérnai (“last year”).^[2][3] The second part is the difficulty: Meillet took it from ἰαύω (iaúō, “to sleep, rest”), so that the year would be named from its pause, while Brugmann started from ἐνιαύω (eniaúō, “to spend the night in”) and thought of the solstice.^[3][2][4] Others took it as a phrase meaning “at the same point”, from ἐνί (ení) and αὐτός (autós), which is LSJ's explanation.^[3][5][6]

Plato's Cratylus explains it as the year that contains everything “within itself”, and Philoxenus derived it from the verb “to sleep”.^[7]

Earliest recorded meaning

It is found from Homer on.^[2][8] The Iliad (2.134) speaks of the years of Zeus that have passed, and in the Odyssey (1.16) the year comes “as the seasons rolled round”.^[5][9] The CGL gives the epic sense “the day a year's cycle is completed, year's end”.^[8]

Semantic evolution

The word first meant the completion of a year's cycle, an anniversary, and so also any long cycle of time; an inscription from Delphi uses the plural for anniversary rites.^[5][8] From Homer on it was also simply a year, beside the more common ἔτος (étos).^[5][8] Philosophers used it for great astronomical cycles: the Pythagorean “great year” and the nineteen-year Metonic cycle in Diodorus.^[5]

The Septuagint and the New Testament use it of a year; in Paul's Letter to the Galatians the “years” observed may be special years such as sabbatical ones.^[10][11]

It survives as Modern Greek ενιαυτός (eniaftós), a word for a year, and the adjective Modern Greek ενιαύσιος (eniáfsios) means “of one year”.^[6]

Timeline

• Homer – The Iliad and the Odyssey use it of the year and the turning of the years.^[5][8]
• Before the 6th century BC – Hesiod uses the phrase “as the years came round”.^[5][4]
• 5th–4th century BC – Plato speaks of the cycles of months and years.^[5][4]
• 1st century BC – Diodorus uses it of the nineteen-year Metonic cycle.^[5][4]
• 1st century AD – The New Testament uses it of a year.^[11]
• Modern Greek – The word survives as a word for the year.^[6]

Meanings

Noun

1. The completion of a year's cycle, year's end; an anniversary.^[8][5]
2. Any long period of time, a cycle, such as the Pythagorean “great year”.^[5]
3. A year.^[5][8][11]

Word family

• ἐνιαύσιος (eniaúsios)

Related words

• ἔτος (étos)
• ἦνις (ênis)
• ἰαύω (iaúō)

References

1. ^ a b c d 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. ^ a b c d 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 c d e Rodríguez Adrados, Francisco, et al., eds. (1980–), Diccionario Griego-Español, Madrid: CSIC, http://dge.cchs.csic.es/xdge
5. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l Liddell, Henry George; Scott, Robert; Jones, Henry Stuart (1940), A Greek-English Lexicon, 9th ed., Oxford: Clarendon Press
6. ^ a b c Babiniotis, Georgios (2010), Ετυμολογικό λεξικό της νέας ελληνικής γλώσσας [Etymological Dictionary of Modern Greek], Athens: Κέντρο Λεξικολογίας
7. ^ Etygram: ancient etymologies of Greek words, CEPAM, Université Côte d'Azur, http://appsweb-cepam.unice.fr/etygram
8. ^ a b c d e f g Diggle, James, et al., eds. (2021), The Cambridge Greek Lexicon, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press
9. ^ Keersmaekers, Alek (2021–2025), GLAUx: The Greek Language Automated corpus, https://github.com/alekkeersmaekers/glaux
10. ^ Lust, Johan; Eynikel, Erik; Hauspie, Katrin (2003), Greek-English Lexicon of the Septuagint, rev. ed., Stuttgart: Deutsche Bibelgesellschaft
11. ^ 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