Etymologically
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ἶρις

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Pronunciation

  • 5th-century BC Attic: /îː.ris/[1]
  • 4th-century AD Koine: /ˈi.ris/[1]
  • 10th-century Byzantine: /ˈi.ris/[1]

Forms

ἶρῐς (îris) f (genitive ῑ̓́ρῐδος); third declension[1] The older form ϝῖρις is shown by an inscription from Corinth and by the epic metre.[2][3]

Etymology

Its original form was ϝῖρις (wîris), and Wiktionary reconstructs Proto-Hellenic *wī́ris.[2][3][1] The goddess Ἶρις (Îris), messenger of the gods, is no doubt the same word.[2][3]

Beekes, following Furnée, considers it Pre-Greek, from Pre-Greek, because the Hesychius gloss ἔριδας (éridas) “rainbows” shows the variation between ⟨ε⟩ and ⟨ι⟩ typical of Pre-Greek words, and because the pre-form *uh₁i-r-i- that the Indo-European etymology needs is hard to motivate.[2][4] Wiktionary adds that the suffix ⟨-ις, -ιδος⟩ also speaks against it.[1]

The traditional etymology derives it from Proto-Indo-European *weyh₁- (“to turn, bend”), the root of ἰτέα (ītéā, “willow”) and ἴτυς (ítus, “felloe of a wheel”).[2][3][5] The same r-suffix would be found in Old English wīr and Old Norse vírr “wire, twisted ornament”, and Frisk accepted the explanation.[2][3][1]

The Stoics, who allegorized Iris as uttered speech, derived the name from εἴρω (eírō, “to say”).[6]

Earliest recorded meaning

In the Iliad it is the rainbow, which the son of Cronus fixes in a cloud as a portent for mortals, and serpents are compared to rainbows.[6][7][8] There the goddess Iris carries messages among the gods, and she never appears in the Odyssey.[6]

Semantic evolution

Aristotle uses it for the lunar rainbow and other coloured rings, Theophrastus for the halo of a lamp, and Lucian for the eyes on a peacock's tail.[6][2] Rufus and Galen use it for the iris of the eye.[6] Because of its many-coloured flowers it named the iris plant in Aristotle and Theophrastus, and an inscription from Samos uses it for an iridescent garment.[6][3] In the Septuagint it is the iris plant and in the Revelation of John the rainbow.[9][10]

Coptic borrowed it, with records from about AD 500.[11] Latin borrowed it as iris, the source of the English word iris, first the plant in the late 14th century and the membrane of the eye in the early 15th.[12][5] Modern Greek ίριδα (írida) is a learned word for the rainbow and, in a Hellenistic sense, the iris of the eye.[13]

Timeline

  • Homer – The Iliad uses it for the rainbow and as the name of the messenger goddess.[6][7]
  • 4th century BC – Aristotle uses it for the lunar rainbow and for the iris plant.[6][14]
  • 4th–3rd century BC – Theophrastus uses it for the halo of a lamp and for the iris plant.[6][14]
  • 1st–2nd century AD – Rufus uses it for the iris of the eye.[6][14]
  • About AD 500 – The Coptic borrowing is first recorded.[11]
  • Late 14th century – English iris, from Latin, names the plant.[5]

Meanings

Noun

  1. The rainbow.[6][8][10]
  2. Any bright ring around another body: the lunar rainbow, the halo of a lamp, the eyes of a peacock's tail.[6][10]
  3. The iris of the eye.[6]
  4. The iris plant, especially the purple Iris germanica.[6][2][9]
  5. An iridescent garment.[6]
  6. A precious stone, in Pliny.[2]
  7. (capitalized) Iris, messenger of the gods.[6][2]

Word family

  • ἴρινος (ī́rinos)

References

  1. ^ a b c d e f g Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
  2. ^ a b c d e f g h i j 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 e f Frisk, Hjalmar (1960–1972), Griechisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3 vols, Heidelberg: Carl Winter
  4. ^ Beekes, Robert S. P. (2014), Pre-Greek: Phonology, Morphology, Lexicon, ed. Stefan Norbruis, Leiden; Boston: Brill
  5. ^ a b c Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
  6. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p Liddell, Henry George; Scott, Robert; Jones, Henry Stuart (1940), A Greek-English Lexicon, 9th ed., Oxford: Clarendon Press
  7. ^ a b Cunliffe, Richard John (1924), A Lexicon of the Homeric Dialect, London: Blackie and Son
  8. ^ a b Diggle, James, et al., eds. (2021), The Cambridge Greek Lexicon, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press
  9. ^ a b Lust, Johan; Eynikel, Erik; Hauspie, Katrin (2003), Greek-English Lexicon of the Septuagint, rev. ed., Stuttgart: Deutsche Bibelgesellschaft
  10. ^ 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
  11. ^ a b Database and Dictionary of Greek Loanwords in Coptic (DDGLC), Freie Universität Berlin and Universität Leipzig
  12. ^ Saalfeld, Günther Alexander (1874), Index Graecorum vocabulorum in linguam latinam translatorum, Berlin: Weidmann
  13. ^ Ινστιτούτο Νεοελληνικών Σπουδών (Ίδρυμα Μανόλη Τριανταφυλλίδη) (1998), Λεξικό της κοινής νεοελληνικής, Thessaloniki: Aristotle University of Thessaloniki
  14. ^ a b c Rodríguez Adrados, Francisco, et al., eds. (1980–), Diccionario Griego-Español, Madrid: CSIC, http://dge.cchs.csic.es/xdge