Etymologically
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ὅμιλος

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Pronunciation

  • 5th-century BC Attic: /hó.miː.los/[1]
  • 4th-century AD Koine: /ˈo.mi.los/[1]
  • 10th-century Byzantine: /ˈo.mi.los/[1]

Forms

ὅμῑλος (hómīlos) m (genitive ὅμῑλου); second declension[1] Aeolic ὄμιλλος (ómillos), perhaps hyperdialectal.[2][3]

Etymology

Beekes considers it Pre-Greek: suffixes with a long vowel and a consonant were frequent in Pre-Greek, the alternation of -ιλ- (-il-) with -ιλλ- (-ill-) (Aeolic ὄμιλλος (ómillos), and the verb ὀμίλλει (omíllei) in Alcaeus) may reflect a suffix *-ily-, and the word recalls ἅμιλλα (hámilla), which also seems to be Pre-Greek.[2][4]

Frisk derives it from ὁμός (homós, “same, joint”) with the rare suffix -ῑλος (-īlos) of στρόβιλος (stróbīlos) and πέδιλον (pédīlon), and takes the Aeolic forms as hyper-Aeolisms;[2] Babiniotis follows this.[5] The older analysis as a compound with ἴλη (ī́lē, “troop”), still given by LSJ and BDAG, is rejected by Babiniotis, because the compound shows no trace of a digamma and would be pleonastic.[6][7][5]

Earliest recorded meaning

In Homer it is an assembled crowd, for a feast or a spectacle, the mass of the people as opposed to the chiefs, and above all the throng of battle, the mêlée.[6][8][3]

Semantic evolution

The word belongs to poetry and to Herodotus and is rare in Attic prose and comedy.[6][3] Thucydides uses it of the crowd of light-armed troops as opposed to the hoplites, Heraclitus of the mob that people take as their teacher, and Herodotus of a large Greek population.[6] It could also mean an assembly of gods, a band of hunters or a company of satyrs.[9]

Its denominative ὁμιλέω (homīléō) “to be together with, associate with” gave ὁμιλία (homīlíā) “company, intercourse”; in the Koine the verb took on the sense “to talk to”.[3][2] In Modern Greek the learned όμιλος (ómilos) means a group or club, a sense taken from French groupe.[10]

Timeline

  • Homer – The Iliad and the Odyssey use it for a crowd and for the throng of battle.[8][6]
  • 6th–5th century BC – Heraclitus uses it of the mob.[6][11]
  • 5th century BC – Herodotus uses it of a large Greek population.[6][11]
  • 5th century BC – Thucydides uses it of light-armed troops.[6][9][11]
  • 1st century AD – A variant reading in Revelation uses it of the people travelling on ships.[7]
  • Modern Greek – It survives as a learned word for a group or club.[10]

Meanings

Noun

  1. A body of men gathered together, especially as a fighting force; light-armed troops as opposed to hoplites.[9][6]
  2. The throng of battle, the press, the fray.[9][6][8]
  3. A crowd, gathered round a person, for an event, or for games and festivals.[9][6]
  4. An assembly or company; a band of hunters or travellers.[9]
  5. A multitude as a whole, as opposed to an individual; a mass of objects.[9][6]
  6. A population, people; the mass of the people, the populace.[9][6]
  7. (pejorative) A mob, rabble.[9][6]

Word family

  • ὁμιλέω (homīléō)
  • ὁμιλία (homīlíā)
  • ἐξόμιλος (exómilos)

References

  1. ^ a b c d Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
  2. ^ 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
  3. ^ a b c d 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
  4. ^ Beekes, Robert S. P. (2014), Pre-Greek: Phonology, Morphology, Lexicon, ed. Stefan Norbruis, Leiden; Boston: Brill
  5. ^ a b Babiniotis, Georgios (2010), Ετυμολογικό λεξικό της νέας ελληνικής γλώσσας [Etymological Dictionary of Modern Greek], Athens: Κέντρο Λεξικολογίας
  6. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n Liddell, Henry George; Scott, Robert; Jones, Henry Stuart (1940), A Greek-English Lexicon, 9th ed., Oxford: Clarendon Press
  7. ^ 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
  8. ^ a b c Cunliffe, Richard John (1924), A Lexicon of the Homeric Dialect, London: Blackie and Son
  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. ^ a b Ινστιτούτο Νεοελληνικών Σπουδών (Ίδρυμα Μανόλη Τριανταφυλλίδη) (1998), Λεξικό της κοινής νεοελληνικής, Thessaloniki: Aristotle University of Thessaloniki
  11. ^ a b c Rodríguez Adrados, Francisco, et al., eds. (1980–), Diccionario Griego-Español, Madrid: CSIC, http://dge.cchs.csic.es/xdge