Ὄασις

Forms

Ὄᾰσῐς (Óasis) f (genitive Ὀᾰ́σεως or Ὀᾰ́σῐος); third declension^[1] Also Αὔασις (Aúasis), the form used by Strabo.^[2][3]

Etymology

It is a borrowing from Egyptian: in Wiktionary's account it is borrowed from Demotic Egyptian wḥj, from older Egyptian wḥꜣt, a word that also meant “cauldron”.^[1][4] The New Pauly gives the Egyptian name of these depressions as wḥt (“hollow”).^[5] The same Egyptian word continues in Coptic ⲟⲩⲁϩⲉ (ouahe), and it was borrowed into Arabic واحة (wāḥa).^[1][5][6] Smith's dictionary, following Peyron, explains the Coptic word as “resting-place”, and Etymonline as “dwelling place”.^[3][6]

Earliest recorded meaning

Herodotus, in the 5th century BC, names Oasis as a town in the Libyan desert, a place the Greeks called the Islands of the Blessed.^[2][7][3][8]

Semantic evolution

For Herodotus it is the name of one place in the desert west of Egypt; later geographers apply the name, in the forms Ὄασις and Αὔασις (Aúasis), to each of the fertile tracts of the Libyan desert.^[2][3][4] Their inhabitants were called Ὀασῖται, and the adjective Ὀασιτικός (Oasitikós) occurs in papyri from the 3rd century BC on.^[2][9] Josephus, Aelian and Procopius still use the name.^[10]

Latin took the name as Oasis.^[1] English oasis came from French and Late Latin in the 1610s, first of the Libyan desert, and has been used figuratively of any fertile spot in a wasteland since about 1800.^[6]

Timeline

• 5th century BC – Herodotus names the desert town of Oasis.^[2][10][8]
• 3rd century BC – Papyri have the adjective Ὀασιτικός (Oasitikós).^[2][9]
• 1st century BC to 1st century AD – Strabo uses the form Αὔασις (Aúasis) for the oases.^[2][3][8]
• 2nd century AD – Ptolemy's Geography names their inhabitants Ὀασῖται.^[2][9][8]
• 4th–5th century AD – The historian Olympiodorus uses the name.^[2][8]
• 1610s – English oasis is first recorded, for the fertile spots of the Libyan desert.^[6]

Meanings

Proper noun

1. Oasis, a town in the Great Oasis of the Libyan desert, west of Egypt.^[7][2]
2. The name of each of the fertile, inhabited places in the Libyan desert.^[2][4][3]

Related words

• Αὔασις (Aúasis)
• Ὀασιτικός (Oasitikós)
• Latin Oasis
• English oasis

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 k Liddell, Henry George; Scott, Robert; Jones, Henry Stuart (1940), A Greek-English Lexicon, 9th ed., Oxford: Clarendon Press
3. ^ a b c d e f Smith, William, ed. (1854), Dictionary of Greek and Roman Geography, London: Walton and Maberly
4. ^ a b c Liddell, Henry George; Scott, Robert (1889), An Intermediate Greek-English Lexicon, Oxford: Clarendon Press
5. ^ a b Cancik, Hubert; Schneider, Helmuth, eds. (2002–2010), Brill's New Pauly: Encyclopaedia of the Ancient World, Leiden: Brill
6. ^ a b c d Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
7. ^ a b Bailly, Anatole (2020), Dictionnaire grec-français, Bailly 2020 Hugo Chávez ed., ed. Gérard Gréco et al.
8. ^ a b c d e Rodríguez Adrados, Francisco, et al., eds. (1980–), Diccionario Griego-Español, Madrid: CSIC, http://dge.cchs.csic.es/xdge
9. ^ a b c Charbonnet, André, Onomata, v4 (Greek proper names, companion to Bailly 2020)
10. ^ a b Keersmaekers, Alek (2021–2025), GLAUx: The Greek Language Automated corpus, https://github.com/alekkeersmaekers/glaux