Etymologically
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ἕλος

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Pronunciation

  • 5th-century BC Attic: /hé.los/[1]
  • 4th-century AD Koine: /ˈe.los/[1]
  • 10th-century Byzantine: /ˈe.los/[1]

Forms

ἕλος (hélos) n (genitive ἕλεος or ἕλους); third declension[1] Mycenaean e-re-e, Cypriot syllabic e-le-i (dative).[2]

Etymology

It is inherited from Proto-Hellenic *hélos, inherited from Proto-Indo-European *sélos (“marsh”), an inherited word identical with Sanskrit सरस् (sáras, “pond”).[3][1] The adjective ἕλειος (héleios) matches a Sanskrit adjective in the same way.[3] The DGE takes the root to be the one found in river names, as in the Sanskrit river name Sarasvatī.[2]

It is not related to Latin silva (“forest”) or to ὕλη (hū́lē).[3][4]

Earliest recorded meaning

The Mycenaean tablets have a form e-re-e, according to the DGE.[2] In Homer it is a wet meadow by a river where horses graze, as in the Iliad (4.483 and 20.221).[5][6]

Semantic evolution

In the Odyssey it already means marshy ground with reeds, and this is the usual sense in Herodotus, Thucydides, Xenophon and Plato: a marsh or swamp.[5][7] Theophrastus speaks of plants that grow in marshes, and in Apollonius of Rhodes it is a shady backwater.[2][5] In the Septuagint it is used of the marshy bank of the Jordan.[2]

Medieval Greek kept the word.[8] It survives as Modern Greek έλος (élos), a learned word for a marsh, with derivatives such as Modern Greek ελώδης (elódis).[9][4]

Timeline

  • 14th–13th century BC – The Mycenaean tablets have the form Mycenaean Greek e-re-e.[2]
  • Homer – The Iliad uses it of a wet meadow where horses graze, and the Odyssey of reedy marshland.[5][2]
  • 5th century BC – Herodotus and Thucydides use it of marshes.[5][7][2]
  • 3rd century BC – Apollonius of Rhodes uses it of a shady backwater.[5][2]
  • 2nd century BC – The First Book of Maccabees uses it of the marshy bank of the Jordan.[2]
  • Modern Greek – The word survives as a learned term for a marsh.[9]

Meanings

Noun

  1. A wet meadow, low ground by a river.[5][2]
  2. A marsh, swamp, marshy ground.[5][7]
  3. A backwater; the marshy bank of a river.[5][2]

Word family

  • ἑλειοβάτης (heleiobátēs)
  • ἑλειονόμος (heleionómos)
  • ἕλειος (héleios)
  • ἑλεόθρεπτος (heleóthreptos)
  • ἑλώδης (helṓdēs)

References

  1. ^ a b c d e Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
  2. ^ 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
  3. ^ 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
  4. ^ a b 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 Liddell, Henry George; Scott, Robert; Jones, Henry Stuart (1940), A Greek-English Lexicon, 9th ed., Oxford: Clarendon Press
  6. ^ Keersmaekers, Alek (2021–2025), GLAUx: The Greek Language Automated corpus, https://github.com/alekkeersmaekers/glaux
  7. ^ a b c Diggle, James, et al., eds. (2021), The Cambridge Greek Lexicon, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press
  8. ^ Kriaras, Emmanuel, Επιτομή του Λεξικού της μεσαιωνικής ελληνικής δημώδους γραμματείας 1100–1669, Κέντρο Ελληνικής Γλώσσας, https://www.greek-language.gr
  9. ^ a b Ινστιτούτο Νεοελληνικών Σπουδών (Ίδρυμα Μανόλη Τριανταφυλλίδη) (1998), Λεξικό της κοινής νεοελληνικής, Thessaloniki: Aristotle University of Thessaloniki