ἠμί

Forms

ἠμῐ́ (ēmí) ^[1]

Etymology

It is a fossilised verb of saying.^[2][3] Its oldest and only Homeric form, the third person ἦ “he said”, is inherited from Proto-Indo-European *h₁eǵ- (“to say”),^[1][3] from an old form *ēǵ-t, whose final cluster was lost.^[2][4] The other forms (the first person ἦν and the present ἠμί and its third person) were built later on the model of φημί (phēmí) and ἔφην (éphēn).^[2][3][4][5]

The perfect ἄνωγα (ánōga, “I command”) belongs to the same root with another vowel grade.^[2][3][1] Cognate with Latin aiō (“I say”) and Old Armenian ասեմ (asem, “I say”).^[1][5][4]

Earliest recorded meaning

Homer uses only the third person ἦ, “he spoke”, nearly always at the end of a speech, as in ἦ, καὶ ἐπ’ ἀργυρέῃ κώπῃ σχέθε χεῖρα “he spoke, and checked his hand on the silver hilt” (Iliad 1.219).^[6][5][7]

Semantic evolution

After Homer the present is rare: Alcman has the Doric third person ἠτί (ētí), Sappho the Aeolic ἦσι (êsi), and the comic poet Hermippus ἠσί (ēsí).^[5][8] In Attic it lived on in two uses.^[5] The first person ἠμί appears in comic dialogue as an emphatic call to a slave, “boy, I say, boy!”.^[5][8] The past tense became the standard way of marking who speaks in a reported dialogue: “said I” and “said he”, which Plato uses constantly in his dialogues.^[5][9]

Later prose writers such as Philostratus copied the Attic phrase, sometimes without the pronoun.^[5] The ancient lexicographers explained the verb by the ordinary word φημί (phēmí).^[10][11]

Timeline

• 700s BC – The Iliad and the Odyssey use the third person ἦ, “he spoke”.^[6][7]
• 7th century BC – Alcman uses the Doric present ἠτί.^[5][12]
• 7th–6th century BC – Sappho uses the Aeolic present ἦσι.^[5][12]
• 5th century BC – The comic poet Hermippus uses ἠσί.^[5][12]
• 5th–4th century BC – Aristophanes uses ἠμί as a call to a slave, and Plato marks speakers with “said I” and “said he”.^[5][8][12]
• 2nd–3rd century AD – Philostratus uses the past form with a noun subject and no pronoun.^[5][12]

Meanings

Verb

1. To speak, say, usually before or after a quoted speech.^[8][6]
2. (Attic comedy, first person) I say!, as an emphatic call: “boy, I say, boy!”.^[5][8]
3. (Attic, in the past tense with a pronoun) said I, said he, said she, marking the speaker in reported dialogue.^[5][9]

Related words

• ἄνωγα (ánōga)
• Latin aiō

References

1. ^ a b c d e f g Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d Frisk, Hjalmar (1960–1972), Griechisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3 vols, Heidelberg: Carl Winter
3. ^ 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
4. ^ a b c Pokorny, Julius (1959), Indogermanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, Bern; Munich: Francke
5. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o Liddell, Henry George; Scott, Robert; Jones, Henry Stuart (1940), A Greek-English Lexicon, 9th ed., Oxford: Clarendon Press
6. ^ a b c Cunliffe, Richard John (1924), A Lexicon of the Homeric Dialect, London: Blackie and Son
7. ^ a b Keersmaekers, Alek (2021–2025), GLAUx: The Greek Language Automated corpus, https://github.com/alekkeersmaekers/glaux
8. ^ a b c d e Diggle, James, et al., eds. (2021), The Cambridge Greek Lexicon, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press
9. ^ a b Korinthios, J. (2025), Grande Dizionario Greco Classico: Greco–Italiano, digital ed., Milan: Hoepli
10. ^ Hesychius of Alexandria, Lexicon, ed. Kurt Latte (Α–Ο, Copenhagen 1953–1966) and Moritz Schmidt (Π–Ω, Jena 1858–1868)
11. ^ Pseudo-Zonaras, Lexicon, ed. Johann August Heinrich Tittmann (1808), Iohannis Zonarae Lexicon, Leipzig: Crusius
12. ^ a b c d e Rodríguez Adrados, Francisco, et al., eds. (1980–), Diccionario Griego-Español, Madrid: CSIC, http://dge.cchs.csic.es/xdge