ἴασπις

Pronunciation

• 5th-century BC Attic: /í.as.pis/^[1]
• 4th-century AD Koine: /ˈi.as.pis/^[1]
• 10th-century Byzantine: /ˈi.as.pis/^[1]

Forms

ῐ̓́ᾰσπῐς (íaspis) f (genitive ῐ̓ᾰ́σπῐδος); third declension^[1]

Etymology

It is an Oriental loanword, probably borrowed from Akkadian yašpû (“jasper”) or a related Semitic form, the name of a stone; compare Biblical Hebrew יָשְׁפֵה (yāšpeh, “jasper”).^[2][3][1] Rosół counts it among the accepted Semitic loanwords, and notes that the Hebrew word is translated in the Septuagint by ἴασπις and by ὀνύχιον (onúkhion).^[3] Where the Semitic word itself comes from is not known, and Beekes and Wiktionary ask whether it was originally Egyptian.^[2][1][4]

Earliest recorded meaning

It is first found in Plato's Phaedo, in the description of the precious stones of the true earth, and in Athenian inscriptions of the 4th century BC.^[5][6][7]

Semantic evolution

Theophrastus describes the stone in his treatise On Stones, and in Dioscorides the name is also given to a plant, probably because of its colour.^[5][2] In the Septuagint it is one of the stones of the high priest's breastplate, and in the Book of Revelation it is the stone of the heavenly city.^[8][6] BDAG notes that in antiquity the name was not limited to the quartz now called jasper but could cover any opaque precious stone.^[8][6]

Latin borrowed it as iaspis.^[9] Modern Greek ίασπις (íaspis) is a learned word for the semi-precious stone.^[10][4]

Timeline

• 5th–4th century BC – Plato names it among the precious stones in the Phaedo.^[5][7]
• 4th–3rd century BC – Theophrastus describes it in On Stones.^[5][2]
• 3rd century BC – The Septuagint uses it for a stone of the high priest's breastplate.^[8][7]
• 1st century AD – Dioscorides uses it as a plant name.^[5][2]
• 1st century AD – The Book of Revelation uses it for a stone of the heavenly Jerusalem.^[6]
• Modern Greek – ίασπις (íaspis) is a learned word for the stone.^[10]

Meanings

Noun

1. Jasper, a brightly coloured kind of chalcedony; more loosely, any opaque precious stone.^[5][11][6]
2. (botany) A plant, the same as the χρυσόγονον (khrusógonon).^[5][2]

Related words

• Latin iaspis

References

1. ^ a b c d e f Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f 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 Rosół, Rafał (2013), Frühe semitische Lehnwörter im Griechischen, Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang
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 Liddell, Henry George; Scott, Robert; Jones, Henry Stuart (1940), A Greek-English Lexicon, 9th ed., Oxford: Clarendon Press
6. ^ a b c d e 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
7. ^ a b c Keersmaekers, Alek (2021–2025), GLAUx: The Greek Language Automated corpus, https://github.com/alekkeersmaekers/glaux
8. ^ a b c Lust, Johan; Eynikel, Erik; Hauspie, Katrin (2003), Greek-English Lexicon of the Septuagint, rev. ed., Stuttgart: Deutsche Bibelgesellschaft
9. ^ Saalfeld, Günther Alexander (1874), Index Graecorum vocabulorum in linguam latinam translatorum, Berlin: Weidmann
10. ^ a b Ινστιτούτο Νεοελληνικών Σπουδών (Ίδρυμα Μανόλη Τριανταφυλλίδη) (1998), Λεξικό της κοινής νεοελληνικής, Thessaloniki: Aristotle University of Thessaloniki
11. ^ Diggle, James, et al., eds. (2021), The Cambridge Greek Lexicon, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press