Etymologically
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ῥώξ

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Pronunciation

  • 5th-century BC Attic: /r̥ɔ̌ːks/[1]
  • 4th-century AD Koine: /ˈroks/[1]
  • 10th-century Byzantine: /ˈroks/[1]

Forms

ῥώξ (rhṓx) f (genitive ῥωγός); third declension[1]

Etymology

It is the Ionic and later form of Attic ῥάξ (rhā́x, “grape”).[2][3] Beekes considers the Attic form Pre-Greek, from Pre-Greek, and ῥώξ a Pre-Greek variant of it: the word is isolated, the Indo-European etymologies proposed for it are to be rejected, and Frisk already called it a Mediterranean word.[3][4][5] It recalls Macedonian ῥάματα (rhámata, “bunches of grapes”), in Hesychius, and Latin racēmus (“stalk of a bunch of grapes”).[3][5] Demiraj compares an Albanian word for “resin”, which would also point to a substrate.[3][6]

Earliest recorded meaning

Archilochus, in the 7th century BC, is the first to use it, for a grape.[2][6][7]

Semantic evolution

Attic said ῥάξ, and ῥώξ belonged to Ionic and to the Koine.[6][2] In the Septuagint it is a grape left on the vine for the poor and a berry of the olive.[2][8] Like ῥάξ it was also used of other berries, of a venomous spider in Nicander and, in the plural, of the fingertips in the physician Rufus.[2] Hesychius, Photius and the Atticist lexica gloss it simply as a “grain, berry”.[9][10][11]

The medieval form Byzantine Greek ρώγα (róga), from the accusative, is found from the 9th century on.[12][13] Today Modern Greek ρώγα (róga) means a grape of a bunch, a nipple and the tip of a finger.[13][14]

Timeline

  • 7th century BC – Archilochus uses it for a grape.[2][6][7]
  • 2nd century BC – The Septuagint uses it for grapes of the vineyard and berries of the olive.[8][2][15]
  • 2nd century BC – Nicander uses it for a kind of spider.[2][7]
  • 1st–2nd century AD – Rufus uses the plural for the fingertips.[2][7]
  • 9th century AD – Medieval ρώγα (róga) is first recorded.[12]
  • Modern Greek – Modern Greek ρώγα (róga) means a grape, a nipple and a fingertip.[13][14]

Meanings

Noun

  1. A grape, a single berry of a bunch.[2][8]
  2. A berry in general, as of the olive.[2][8]
  3. A venomous kind of spider.[2][9]
  4. (plural) The fingertips.[2]

Word family

  • ῥάξ (rhā́x)
  • Latin racēmus
  • Modern Greek ρώγα (róga)

Usage notes

A separate ῥώξ, from ῥήγνυμι (rhḗgnūmi, “to break”), means a breach or cleft; it occurs in the Odyssey (22.143), where the “ῥῶγες of the hall” are perhaps narrow passages leading into it.[2][16][3]

References

  1. ^ a b c d Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
  2. ^ 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
  3. ^ a b c d e 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. ^ Beekes, Robert S. P. (2014), Pre-Greek: Phonology, Morphology, Lexicon, ed. Stefan Norbruis, Leiden; Boston: Brill
  5. ^ a b Frisk, Hjalmar (1960–1972), Griechisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3 vols, Heidelberg: Carl Winter
  6. ^ a b c d Scarborough, Matthew (2025), PHILOGLOSSA: database of Pre-Greek and other non-Indo-European words in Ancient Greek, version 1.0
  7. ^ a b c d Rodríguez Adrados, Francisco, et al., eds. (1980–), Diccionario Griego-Español, Madrid: CSIC, http://dge.cchs.csic.es/xdge
  8. ^ a b c d Lust, Johan; Eynikel, Erik; Hauspie, Katrin (2003), Greek-English Lexicon of the Septuagint, rev. ed., Stuttgart: Deutsche Bibelgesellschaft
  9. ^ a b Hesychius of Alexandria, Lexicon, ed. Kurt Latte (Α–Ο, Copenhagen 1953–1966) and Moritz Schmidt (Π–Ω, Jena 1858–1868)
  10. ^ Photius, Lexicon, ed. Christos Theodoridis, vol. 1 (Α–Δ) (Berlin: De Gruyter, 1982); ed. Richard Porson (Cambridge, 1822)
  11. ^ Lexica Segueriana, in Immanuel Bekker, ed. (1814), Anecdota Graeca I, Berlin: Nauck
  12. ^ a b Kriaras, Emmanuel, Επιτομή του Λεξικού της μεσαιωνικής ελληνικής δημώδους γραμματείας 1100–1669, Κέντρο Ελληνικής Γλώσσας, https://www.greek-language.gr
  13. ^ a b c Ινστιτούτο Νεοελληνικών Σπουδών (Ίδρυμα Μανόλη Τριανταφυλλίδη) (1998), Λεξικό της κοινής νεοελληνικής, Thessaloniki: Aristotle University of Thessaloniki
  14. ^ a b Babiniotis, Georgios (2010), Ετυμολογικό λεξικό της νέας ελληνικής γλώσσας [Etymological Dictionary of Modern Greek], Athens: Κέντρο Λεξικολογίας
  15. ^ Keersmaekers, Alek (2021–2025), GLAUx: The Greek Language Automated corpus, https://github.com/alekkeersmaekers/glaux
  16. ^ Diggle, James, et al., eds. (2021), The Cambridge Greek Lexicon, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press