ὀπτός

Forms

ὀπτός (optós) m (feminine ὀπτή, neuter ὀπτόν); first/second declension^[1]

Etymology

The origin is unknown.^[1][2] It is generally taken as the base of the verb ὀπτάω (optáō, “to roast”), rather than the other way round.^[3][4][2] Beekes, following Furnée, compares ὄψον (ópson, “cooked food”) as a variant and considers the variation Pre-Greek.^[3] Benveniste and others tried to connect it with πέσσω (péssō, “to cook, bake”), a link Chantraine would like to make and Babiniotis accepts as possible, but Frisk and Wiktionary reject or doubt it.^[4][2][5][1] Schwyzer's comparison with ὀβελός (obelós, “spit”) is dismissed by Chantraine as speculation.^[4][2]

Earliest recorded meaning

In the Odyssey it is used of roast meat, as in the phrase “bread and roast meats”.^[6][7][8]

Semantic evolution

Classical writers set ὀπτά, roast meats, against ἑφθά (hephthós), boiled ones, as Euripides does in the Cyclops.^[7][4] Herodotus uses it of baked bread and of fired bricks, and the word became the usual term for bricks and pottery hardened in the kiln.^[7][9][4] Xenophon applies it to soil parched by the sun, and Sophocles to iron hardened in the fire.^[7][9]

The Septuagint uses it of roasted meat in Exodus, and the New Testament of broiled fish.^[10][11] The word appears in a 17th-century vernacular dictionary and in Modern Greek dialects, and the standard Modern Greek οπτός (optós, “baked, roasted”) is learned, as in οπτόπλινθος (optóplinthos, “fired brick”).^[12][13][5]

Timeline

• Homer – The Odyssey uses it of roast meat.^[6][7]
• 5th century BC – Herodotus uses it of baked bread and fired bricks.^[7][9]
• 5th century BC – Sophocles applies it to iron hardened in the fire.^[7][9]
• 5th–4th century BC – Xenophon uses it of soil parched dry.^[7][9]
• 3rd century BC – Herodas uses it of scorched lintels.^[7]
• 1st century AD – The New Testament has it of broiled fish.^[11]
• Modern Greek – The learned οπτός (optós) means baked or roasted.^[13][5]

Meanings

Adjective

1. Roasted, broiled, of meat and fish; τὰ ὀπτά, roast meats, as opposed to boiled.^[7][9][6]
2. Baked, of bread; fired, of bricks and pottery.^[7][9]
3. Parched, baked dry, of soil.^[7][9]
4. Of iron, hardened or tempered in the fire.^[7][9]
5. Scorched.^[7]

Word family

• ὀπτάω (optáō)
• ὀπτόπλινθον (optóplinthon)
• ἔξοπτος (éxoptos)
• ἡμίοπτος (hēmíoptos)
• ὀπταλέος (optaléos)
• ὀπτάνιον (optánion)

Usage notes

A separate, rare adjective ὀπτός means “visible”; it is found in Lucian and Athenaeus.^[7] It is a verbal adjective of the root of ὄπωπα (ópōpa, “I have seen”), from Proto-Indo-European *h₃kʷ-tó-.^[1][14] Hesychius glosses ὀπτός with both meanings, “appearing” and “cooked by fire”.^[15]

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 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 d e Chantraine, Pierre (2009), Dictionnaire étymologique de la langue grecque: histoire des mots, new ed. with a supplement (Chroniques d'étymologie grecque 1–10), Paris: Klincksieck
5. ^ a b c Babiniotis, Georgios (2010), Ετυμολογικό λεξικό της νέας ελληνικής γλώσσας [Etymological Dictionary of Modern Greek], Athens: Κέντρο Λεξικολογίας
6. ^ a b c Cunliffe, Richard John (1924), A Lexicon of the Homeric Dialect, London: Blackie and Son
7. ^ 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
8. ^ Keersmaekers, Alek (2021–2025), GLAUx: The Greek Language Automated corpus, https://github.com/alekkeersmaekers/glaux
9. ^ a b c d e f g h i Diggle, James, et al., eds. (2021), The Cambridge Greek Lexicon, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press
10. ^ Lust, Johan; Eynikel, Erik; Hauspie, Katrin (2003), Greek-English Lexicon of the Septuagint, rev. ed., Stuttgart: Deutsche Bibelgesellschaft
11. ^ a b 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
12. ^ Kriaras, Emmanuel, Επιτομή του Λεξικού της μεσαιωνικής ελληνικής δημώδους γραμματείας 1100–1669, Κέντρο Ελληνικής Γλώσσας, https://www.greek-language.gr
13. ^ a b Ινστιτούτο Νεοελληνικών Σπουδών (Ίδρυμα Μανόλη Τριανταφυλλίδη) (1998), Λεξικό της κοινής νεοελληνικής, Thessaloniki: Aristotle University of Thessaloniki
14. ^ Wodtko, Dagmar S.; Irslinger, Britta; Schneider, Carolin (2008), Nomina im indogermanischen Lexikon, Heidelberg: Winter
15. ^ Hesychius of Alexandria, Lexicon, ed. Kurt Latte (Α–Ο, Copenhagen 1953–1966) and Moritz Schmidt (Π–Ω, Jena 1858–1868)