Strange letter in Greek word

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Abstractus
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Strange letter in Greek word

Post by Abstractus »

I am translating (from Latin) a mathematical text from XVII century, in which occasionally some Greek words appear. Unfortunately I do not know Greek, so I wonder if somebody could be kind enough to help. Here is the word:
Image

What is this strange letter which looks like @, and what is the meaning of this word?

I tried to search LSJ disctionary for words starting with ευχει..., and here is what I found:
http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/res ... lang=greek

modus.irrealis
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Re: Strange letter in Greek word

Post by modus.irrealis »

I'm fairly sure it's ἐγχειρήσεως, the genitive of ἐγχείρησις which here probably means something like "manipulation, operation".

It's written ἐν- instead of ἐγ- but my guess is that the Latin transliteration has interfered with the spelling here, and also if it were εὐ- the breathing mark would be written over the υ and not the ε. That it's a genitive goes with "hujus". I know only the very basics when it comes to the ligatures in Greek, but I do recall that the large circle represent a σ and it does seem to be circling an ω-like shape. But no matter how sure I might be, this is still a guess.

Edit: it seems like I remembered wrong -- if you look at this Wikipedia article it has a picture of the -ος ligature that matches the one here, so the circle is the ο and the squiggle inside is the σ. I still think it's the same word but it's just the Latin transliteration encheireseos transliterated back into Greek by someone who didn't know Greek very well.

Abstractus
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Re: Strange letter in Greek word

Post by Abstractus »

Thanks a lot - genitive of "manipulation" seems to make sense in the context of previous sentences. The second letter may indeed by γ - the quality of scan is not very good, but I do not have access to the original to check. You conjecture regarding transliteration also seems to be very plausible. Thanks again!

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