Etymologically
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ἐχῖνος

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Pronunciation

  • 5th-century BC Attic: /e.kʰîː.nos/[1]
  • 4th-century AD Koine: /eˈçi.nos/[1]
  • 10th-century Byzantine: /eˈçi.nos/[1]

Forms

ἐχῖνος (ekhînos) m (genitive ἐχῑ́νου); second declension[1] Mycenaean e-ki-no.[1]

Etymology

It is inherited from Proto-Hellenic *ekʰinos,[1] from Proto-Indo-European *h₁eǵʰis (“hedgehog”).[1][2] Beekes and Frisk take it as probably derived from ἔχις (ékhis, “snake”) with the suffix -ῑνο- (-īno-), so that it first meant “snake animal”, that is “snake-eater”, a taboo name replacing the old word χήρ (khḗr).[2][3] Babiniotis also gives this view, with a “perhaps”.[4]

Other languages form the hedgehog's name from the same root with other suffixes: Old Armenian ոզնի (ozni) has an /n/ suffix like the Greek word, Proto-Germanic *igilaz (whence Old High German igil) has an /l/, and Baltic and Slavic have a derivative in *-yo-, such as Lithuanian ežỹs.[2][3][1] Frisk allows that the Germanic /l/ may have replaced an older /n/.[3]

Earliest recorded meaning

It first appears in Archilochus and Empedocles, meaning the land hedgehog.[5][6]

Semantic evolution

From the hedgehog the name passed to the sea urchin, which Plato calls the “sea hedgehog”.[5][6] In Athenian law it was a lidded jar in which the arbitrators sealed the documents of a case that was appealed to a court, as Demosthenes and Aristotle describe.[5][6][7] Aristotle used it for the third stomach of ruminants, Theophrastus for the spiny husk of chestnuts and beech-nuts, and Xenophon in the plural for the sharp points at each end of a horse's bit.[5][6] The Latin echinus was taken from it,[8] and in Vitruvius it names the rounded cushion of the Doric capital.[5]

Medieval Greek kept εχίνος for the hedgehog.[9] The popular word for the sea urchin, Modern Greek αχινός (achinós), is the medieval form that lost its initial /e/ when it ran together with the indefinite article.[10][4] Modern Greek has εχίνος (echínos) again as a learned word for the sea urchin and the hedgehog, the column moulding, the stomach of ruminants and the husk of nuts, and for an anti-tank obstacle.[10]

Timeline

  • 7th century BC – Archilochus uses it for the hedgehog.[5][11]
  • 5th century BC – Empedocles and Aristophanes name the hedgehog, and Hippocratic writings use it for a large, wide-mouthed jar.[5][6][11]
  • 4th century BC – Plato calls the sea urchin the “sea hedgehog”, Demosthenes and Aristotle use it for the jar in which legal evidence was sealed, and Aristotle uses it for the third stomach of ruminants.[5][6][11]
  • 4th–3rd century BC – Theophrastus uses it for the spiny husk of chestnuts.[5][11]
  • Middle Ages – Vernacular Greek uses εχίνος for the hedgehog, and the variant αχινός arises.[9][10]
  • Modern Greek – The learned Modern Greek εχίνος (echínos) names the sea urchin and the moulding of the Doric capital, and the popular Modern Greek αχινός (achinós) the sea urchin.[10][4]

Meanings

Noun

  1. A hedgehog.[5][6]
  2. A sea urchin, in full the “sea hedgehog”.[5][6]
  3. A large, wide-mouthed jar.[5][6]
  4. (law) The jar in which the documents of a case were sealed up when the arbitrators' decision was appealed.[5][6][7]
  5. The prickly husk of beech-nuts and chestnuts.[5]
  6. The third stomach of ruminants; also the gizzard of grain-eating birds.[5]
  7. (in the plural) The sharp points at each end of a horse's bit.[5][6]
  8. (architecture) The rounded cushion of the Doric and Tuscan capital, the echinus.[5]

Word family

  • ἐχινέα (ekhinéa)
  • ἐχίνιον (ekhínion)
  • ἐχινίς (ekhinís)
  • ἐχινίσκος (ekhinískos)
  • ἐχινόπους (ekhīnópous)
  • ἐχινώδης (ekhinṓdēs)

Usage notes

Two proverbs about the animal are recorded.[12][7] “The hedgehog puts off its birth” was said of delays that make things worse, since the hedgehog was thought to hold back its young for fear of their spines, which then grew harder and made the birth more painful.[12][7] “Before two hedgehogs make friends, one from the sea and one from the land” was said of things too unlike to agree.[12]

References

  1. ^ a b c d e f g h Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
  2. ^ a b c 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 Frisk, Hjalmar (1960–1972), Griechisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3 vols, Heidelberg: Carl Winter
  4. ^ a b c Babiniotis, Georgios (2010), Ετυμολογικό λεξικό της νέας ελληνικής γλώσσας [Etymological Dictionary of Modern Greek], Athens: Κέντρο Λεξικολογίας
  5. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q Liddell, Henry George; Scott, Robert; Jones, Henry Stuart (1940), A Greek-English Lexicon, 9th ed., Oxford: Clarendon Press
  6. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k Diggle, James, et al., eds. (2021), The Cambridge Greek Lexicon, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press
  7. ^ a b c d Photius, Lexicon, ed. Christos Theodoridis, vol. 1 (Α–Δ) (Berlin: De Gruyter, 1982); ed. Richard Porson (Cambridge, 1822)
  8. ^ Saalfeld, Günther Alexander (1874), Index Graecorum vocabulorum in linguam latinam translatorum, Berlin: Weidmann
  9. ^ a b Kriaras, Emmanuel, Επιτομή του Λεξικού της μεσαιωνικής ελληνικής δημώδους γραμματείας 1100–1669, Κέντρο Ελληνικής Γλώσσας, https://www.greek-language.gr
  10. ^ a b c d Ινστιτούτο Νεοελληνικών Σπουδών (Ίδρυμα Μανόλη Τριανταφυλλίδη) (1998), Λεξικό της κοινής νεοελληνικής, Thessaloniki: Aristotle University of Thessaloniki
  11. ^ a b c d Rodríguez Adrados, Francisco, et al., eds. (1980–), Diccionario Griego-Español, Madrid: CSIC, http://dge.cchs.csic.es/xdge
  12. ^ a b c Adler, Ada, ed. (1928–1938), Suidae Lexicon, 5 vols, Leipzig: Teubner