ὦρος

Forms

ὦρος (ôros) m (genitive ὤρου); second declension^[1] The longer form ἄωρος (áōros) is found in Sappho.^[2][3]

Etymology

The origin is uncertain.^[4] It seems to be a doublet of ἄωρος (áōros, “sleep”), and the Etymologicum Magnum explains the longer form as ὦρος with an added alpha that adds nothing to the meaning.^[3][4][5]

Chantraine suggests, very tentatively, that if the two are doublets the α- is a prothetic vowel before an old /w/, and that the sense “spend the night, sleep” recalls ἄεσα (áesa): beside the root form of that verb he sets up a long-vowel noun Proto-Indo-European *h₂wōro-, which he also sees in Old Norse órar (“confusion of mind”).^[4] Pokorny likewise places both forms under the root *au- (“to spend the night, sleep”).^[6] Beekes thinks a link with ἀωτέω (aōtéō), used with “sleep” in Homer, is impossible.^[3]

Earliest recorded meaning

Callimachus uses ὦρος for sleep, where some editors had read ἄωρος, the form in Sappho.^[2][1][4]

Semantic evolution

Hesychius glosses ὦρος as “night”, and Pape records that sense from Euphorion.^[7][2][8] Chantraine adds a Hesychian verb ὠρίζω (ōrízō) “to sleep”, a gloss confused with others, and calls the whole group very elusive.^[4]

Timeline

• 7th–6th century BC – Sappho has the longer form ἄωρος (áōros) “sleep”.^[2][3][9]
• 4th–3rd century BC – Callimachus uses ὦρος for sleep.^[2][1][9]
• 5th century AD (probably) – Hesychius glosses it as “night”.^[7]

Meanings

Noun

1. (poetic) Sleep.^[2][1][8]
2. Night.^[7][2][8]

Related words

• ἄωρος (áōros)

Usage notes

A separate Doric word ὦρος stands for ὅρος (hóros, “boundary”) (LSJ ὦρος (B)).^[2] Theocritus also has a Doric neuter ὦρος, genitive ὤρεος, for ὄρος (óros, “mountain”), and most of the word's occurrences in the GLAUx corpus are of this Doric mountain word.^[10][8][11]

References

1. ^ a b c d Diggle, James, et al., eds. (2021), The Cambridge Greek Lexicon, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press
2. ^ a b c d e f g h Liddell, Henry George; Scott, Robert; Jones, Henry Stuart (1940), A Greek-English Lexicon, 9th ed., Oxford: Clarendon Press
3. ^ 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
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. ^ Frisk, Hjalmar (1960–1972), Griechisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3 vols, Heidelberg: Carl Winter
6. ^ Pokorny, Julius (1959), Indogermanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, Bern; Munich: Francke
7. ^ a b c Hesychius of Alexandria, Lexicon, ed. Kurt Latte (Α–Ο, Copenhagen 1953–1966) and Moritz Schmidt (Π–Ω, Jena 1858–1868)
8. ^ a b c d Pape, Wilhelm (1914), Griechisch-deutsches Handwörterbuch, 3rd ed., rev. Max Sengebusch, Braunschweig: Vieweg
9. ^ a b Rodríguez Adrados, Francisco, et al., eds. (1980–), Diccionario Griego-Español, Madrid: CSIC, http://dge.cchs.csic.es/xdge
10. ^ Bailly, Anatole (2020), Dictionnaire grec-français, Bailly 2020 Hugo Chávez ed., ed. Gérard Gréco et al.
11. ^ Keersmaekers, Alek (2021–2025), GLAUx: The Greek Language Automated corpus, https://github.com/alekkeersmaekers/glaux