ᾠόν

Forms

ᾠόν (ōión) n (genitive ᾠοῦ); second declension^[1] Old poetic ὤεον (Epicharmus, Ibycus, Semonides, Hellenistic poetry) and Aeolic ὤϊον (Sappho), Hellenistic spelling ὠόν.^[2][3] Hesychius records an Argive plural ὤβεα, which may stand for ὤϝεα with a digamma.^[2][3]

Etymology

It is inherited from Proto-Hellenic *ōyyón,^[1] inherited from Proto-Indo-European *h₂ōwyóm (“egg”), an old word for the egg that several Indo-European languages keep in differing shapes.^[1][2][4] Beekes stresses that no reconstruction yet accounts for all the forms: Latin and Greek point to a stem with -w-, while Iranian and Slavic forms show no trace of it.^[2][3]

Cognate with Latin ōvum, Old High German ei, Old Norse egg, Old English ǣġ (the source of the English word egg) and Persian خایه (xâye).^[2][1] The word is often explained as a derivative of the word for “bird”, Proto-Indo-European *h₂éwis, the source of αἰετός (aietós, “eagle”) and οἰωνός (oiōnós, “bird of prey”) and of Latin avis;^[1][4] Beekes leaves that link open, citing Schindler's study.^[2]

Earliest recorded meaning

Sappho uses it of the egg of Leda, from which Castor and Pollux were born, and Semonides of an ordinary egg.^[5]

Semantic evolution

In Classical prose it is the egg of birds and reptiles: Herodotus writes that the crocodile lays its eggs on land and hatches them there, and also uses the plural for the spawn of fish.^[6][5] As food it is mostly the hen's egg, in Aristophanes and Plato, and Aristotle and the Hippocratic writers name its white and its yolk.^[6] Aristotle uses it for the eggs of all birds, of serpents and tortoises, and even for the seed of plants.^[6] In myth it is a container from which beings are born: in Aristophanes' Birds Night lays the egg from which Eros hatched.^[5] Later it named egg-shaped things, a glass cupping-vessel in Hero and an egg-shaped cup.^[6]

The Septuagint has it seven times, and the New Testament once, in Luke's saying about a son who asks for an egg.^[7][8] Modern Greek αυγό (avgó) continues it: Babiniotis derives it, through medieval αὐγόν, from the plural τὰ ᾠά, in which the vowels shifted and a γ grew between them.^[9][4] The ancient form survives as the learned ωόν.^[9]

Timeline

• 7th–6th century BC – Sappho uses it of Leda's egg and Semonides of an egg.^[5][10]
• 5th century BC – Herodotus uses it of crocodile eggs and of the spawn of fish.^[6][5][10]
• 5th–4th century BC – Aristophanes has it of hens' eggs as food and of the cosmic egg laid by Night.^[6][5][10]
• 4th century BC – Aristotle extends it to the eggs of serpents and tortoises and to the seed of plants.^[6][10]
• 1st century AD – Luke's Gospel uses it once, of an egg a child asks for.^[8][4]
• Medieval Greek – The plural τὰ ᾠά turns into αὐγόν, the ancestor of Modern Greek αυγό (avgó).^[9]

Meanings

Noun

1. An egg of a bird or reptile; especially a hen's egg as food.^[6][5]
2. In the plural, the spawn of fish.^[6][5]
3. (Aristotle) The seed of a plant.^[6]
4. A mythical egg from which beings are born, as Leda's egg or the egg laid by Night.^[5]
5. An egg-shaped vessel: a glass cupping-glass, an egg-shaped cup.^[6]

Word family

• ᾠάριον (ōiárion)
• ᾠοειδής (ōioeidḗs)
• ᾠώδης (ōiṓdēs)
• ᾠοτόκος (ōiotókos)

Related words

• Latin ōvum
• αἰετός (aietós)
• οἰωνός (oiōnós)

References

1. ^ a b c d e f g h Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f 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 Frisk, Hjalmar (1960–1972), Griechisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3 vols, Heidelberg: Carl Winter
4. ^ a b c d Heggarty, Paul, et al. (2023), Indo-European Cognate Relationships (IE-CoR), Leipzig: Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, https://iecor.clld.org
5. ^ a b c d e f g h i Diggle, James, et al., eds. (2021), The Cambridge Greek Lexicon, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press
6. ^ 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
7. ^ Lust, Johan; Eynikel, Erik; Hauspie, Katrin (2003), Greek-English Lexicon of the Septuagint, rev. ed., Stuttgart: Deutsche Bibelgesellschaft
8. ^ 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
9. ^ a b c Babiniotis, Georgios (2010), Ετυμολογικό λεξικό της νέας ελληνικής γλώσσας [Etymological Dictionary of Modern Greek], Athens: Κέντρο Λεξικολογίας
10. ^ a b c d Rodríguez Adrados, Francisco, et al., eds. (1980–), Diccionario Griego-Español, Madrid: CSIC, http://dge.cchs.csic.es/xdge