Puzzle From The 18th Century

Greek Learning Greek
1

I am not really a classicist, and I hope it’s OK to use these boards to get a very little help (one word’s worth of help!) from someone who is. I am currently translating and annotating the work of the 18th century Italian scientist Vitaliano Donati. In his book he gives an etymology (probably, I think, false) of the word “coral” as being derived from two Greek words which appear in his book like this:

… and which he glosses as meaning ornamento, e bellezza di mare — “ornament and beauty of the sea”.

The second word, ἁλός, is fine, it’s “salt” in the genitive, used to mean “of the sea”. The first word looks like κοςεῖν, which is just plain wrong, what’s a final sigma doing in the middle of a word?

But now the plot thickens. In the French edition of the book, the words appear like this:

Now the doubtful letter appears to be an 18th century typographer’s idea of a rho — I think. Which is all to the good, because Donati thinks he’s providing an etymology for κοράλλιον, which has a rho in it.

The problem with this is that κορεῖν does not, so far as I know, mean “ornament” or “beauty”. It is the infinitive of a verb meaning “sweep clean”.

To complicate things a little further, many people have suggested that κοράλλιον is derived from κόρη ἁλός — “daughter of the sea”. But if Donati was trying to refer to this etymology, how did he come to make such a gross mistake?

Well, it beats me. I’ve looked through Greek thesauruses for words meaning “ornament” and “beauty” that might have been misprinted as κοςεῖν or κορεῖν, and have drawn a blank. Now I can think of nothing to do but appeal to the wisdom, ingenuity, and kindness of others. Can anyone figure out what Donati meant to write, and why?

Anyone who can help will receive my eternal gratitude, and, if s/he likes, an acknowledgement if my translation ever comes to press.

2

The LSJ lists κορέω as an alternate form of κορέννυμι. So κορεῖν & ἁλος is “to glut & salt.”

3

Certainly it’s a ρ, not a ς. According to Pierre Chantraine’s Dictionnaire étymologique de la langue grecque (the first place you should look if you have a question pertaining to Greek etymology), the etymology of κοράλλιον is obscure. There seems to be some link with κόρη “girl” (or “daughter”), as the word fluctuates between κορ- κουρ- κωρ- between Greek dialects, just like the word for “girl”. Chantraine seems to suggest that “κόρη ἁλός” is a possibility, which may be a loan translation from Indian. Another possibility is it being a Semitic loan.

κοσμεῖν “to arrange” means, among other things, “to adorn, to dress”, hence our “cosmetics”. But there’s no way I suppose it could have anything to do with the word κοράλλιον.

4

Thank you for your comments so far. I should explain that I don’t need to know the actual etymology of κοράλλιον. I just need to know what Vitaliano Donati thought the etymology was: what word was in his mind or his manuscript that made it on to the printed page as the nonsensical κοςεῖν. (I am assuming that he didn’t just make the word up to baffle his readers and that some sort of mistake has occurred.)

5

I have one 18th century book with Greek text, an edition of Hesiod with a Latin translation on the opposite page, printed in Italy I think. The Greek has a lot of mistakes. Based on this single experience, I suppose it’s quite likely that some typographers were quite ignorant of Greek, and that many readers knew Greek only superficially and would mostly be content with the Latin translation.

Perhaps it’s a complex series of mistakes, Donati thinking about κοσμεῖν but the typographer accidentally printing ς instead of a ligature for σμ? (Greek texts typically had lots of ligatures in those times)

6

I know how you like Chantraine, but don’t forget Hjalmar Frisk! His magnum opus is Griechisches etymologisches Wörterbuch (1960—70). Frisk, Chantraine and Beekes mention that it could be a Semitic loan, cf. Hebrew גּוֹרָל (gōrāl) ‘lot (stones which are cast to get a decision)’ (HALOT 185b).

Theoretically, the ς in the first entry could be a stigma (a ligature σ + τ), but perhaps it’s more likely a lapsus typographicus.

7

The following Italian dictionary gives κορέω, glossing it as ornare. It also gives very similar wording, calling it: “Ornamento del mare.”

https://books.google.com/books?id=6hBaAAAAcAAJ&pg=PA1300

We can’t read too much into the above, as it uses Vitaliano Donati as the original source I’m sure. Still, I think that our original source should be read as κορεῖν, as the French translator thought. How well did Donati know Greek? I think it’s likely that he wrote κορεῖν, confusing it with κοσμεῖν. There is also a surprising mistake in the breathing for ἁλός, present in both French and Italian editions.

Vitaliano Donati on Google Books: https://books.google.com/books?id=X7XmWivo17YC&dq=editions%3AjoCAU8QfCSMC&pg=PR43#v=onepage&q&f=false

I’m surprised that we have yet to hear from our resident Italian scholar.

8

Perhaps Donati was thinking about the Latin word corona when he confused κορεῖν with κοσμεῖν? And perhaps (a very wild theory) the ρ was changed to ς by a typographer who was subconsciously thinking about the correct word κοσμεῖν?

I suppose it’s impossible to know exactly what happened.

9

Never met. :smiley:

10

I am not so convinced as jeidsath that the dictionary got its etymology from Donati. He, after all, says that this is the etymology of coral “al giudizio d’alcuni” (“according to the opinion of some people”); and the dictionary doesn’t use the same form of the verb as he does. Also, why would an etymologist read Donati?

It is therefore a distinct possibility that there was an opinion current in Italy that this was the derivation of coral and that the verb in question meant “adorn” rather than “satiate” or “sweep”.

11

I don’t think it’s possible it was a current opinion, if by opinion we mean “considered opinion”, since it’s so obviously a mistake. If Donati isn’t the original source, the original mistake must have been made by someone else, in which case Donati and others copied the mistake without really thinking about it.

Whoever made the mistake probably mixed up κορεῖν and κοσμεῖν while thinking about Latin “corona” (or some similar Italian word if there is one, or French “couronne”, “couronner” etc.). ς for ρ must be just a typographical mistake then, a very comprehensible one if neither Donati nor the typographer knew Greek very well.

12

I don’t think it’s possible it was a current opinion, if by opinion we mean “considered opinion”, since it’s so obviously a mistake. If Donati isn’t the original source, the original mistake must have been made by someone else, in which case Donati and others copied the mistake without really thinking about it.

Well, it’s a mistake which wasn’t obvious to someone whose job was compiling an etymological dictionary, so a fortiori it might easily have fooled Donati, whose area of expertise was things that grew on the bottom of the sea. Right now, based on jeidsath’s discovery, my preferred hypothesis is that Donati was copying an error common among Italians of his time. That leaves the question of how the error arose in the first place, but fortunately I don’t, strictly speaking, need to know that — I only need to correct the errors of Donati’s typesetter, and not those of Donati himself.