ΛΕΞΙΚΟΝ ΕΛΛΗΝΙΚΟΝ ἐν εἰκόσιν

Composition and Communication Composition Board
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69.17 I am delighted to see the Modern Greek for café, καφενεῖον. But that kaf-en- stem should put you in suspicion: it’s a Katharevousa adornment of the Demotic καφενές, which is in turn a loan from Turkish kahvene < kahve-hane < Persian qahveh-khaneh “house of coffee”.

https://anemourion.blogspot.com/2017/09/blog-post_53.html (drawing from a 1980s book on 19th century café culture) reports that some 19th century café owners rejected καφενεῖον as barbarous (too close to kahvene) and used καφεῖον. Hepites’ 1912 French–Modern Greek dictionary (https://books.google.com.au/books?id=m03kBgAAQBAJ&pg=PA145&lpg=PA145&dq=καφείον+καφενείον&source=bl&ots=02FtwK5_UU&sig=UmadbjQugEqkG73zDTeWT9Df_Ss&hl=el&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwimk8K4u-_cAhULy7wKHbmiDy8Q6AEwAnoECAgQAQ#v=onepage&q=καφείον%20καφενείον&f=false) also offers it as an option. I’m delighted to see the Modern Greek for café, but I reluctantly agree with my 19th century antecedents: καφεῖον is to be preferred.

… and it has the benefit of not-so-accidentally being the same as Esperanto kafejo (its -ejo suffix is taken from -εῖον.)

70.3, 70.5 You’re using φάκελος for both “folder” and “envelope”; and Modern Greek does the same. I normally applaud the use of Modern terms, but the Ancient meaning “bundle” seems too far removed. Might you consider δίπτυχον for “folder”? And καλύπτρα or θύλακος for “envelope”?

72.2 πηκτικὴ ὑγρότης? Surely πηκτικὸν ὑγρόν.

72.7 ξηρο-ποιὸν μηχᾰν-ημα, ατος, τό. Modern Greek just calls this a “little pistol” (πιστολάκι), which I’m not suggesting. But Modern Greek would also never refer to dried hair as ξηρά, only στεγνά; ξηρά μαλλιά is dry hair, as in pathologically dry, flaking off. (And note that LSJ defines ξηραίνω as “dry up, parch”, I would suggest στεγνωτήρ (which in Modern Greek is a hand dryer).

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Thank you! I’ll include the changes in the new revision.

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73.3 σῑτ-ηρὸν πνεῦμα, ατος, τό: There are a few points against this. πνεῦμα for distilled alcohol is not Ancient (just as distillation wasn’t), is not mediaeval (at least, not in Trapp’s Lexikon), and is barely going to be recognisable from Modern Greek (“alcohol” is οἰνόπνευμα, though that is a Modern calque; the vernacular had borrowed Italian spirito as σπίρτο.) But more to the point, “wheat spirit” is a description, which also applies to gin and (now) vodka. This is a drink originally from a particular place, it should be treated as a loanword, and the Latin does just have vischium. Conceding and using οὐίσκιον, which is what Modern Greek does (without the -ον) is the most clean way forward.

73.6 ὑᾰλ-ῐνον ποτήριον οἴνου, τό, ὑᾰλ-ῐνον ἔκ-πωμα οἴνου, ατος, τό. Of course, noone is going to say all that, it’ll just be ποτήριον (like Modern Greek) or ἔκπωμα. I see in LSJ that the adjective ὑαλοῦν does get used for ἔκπωμα, and it wouldn’t be that absurd, just as in English, to generalise “glass” to denote a drinking vessel. (Early Modern Greek did with γιαλί < ὑαλίον, although Modern Greek speakers will only be aware of the other generalisation, “mirror”, and even that is now antiquated.)

You differentiate wine glass from beer glass 73.21. Modern Greek has κρασοπότηρο for “wine glass”, and οἰνοπότηρον, ζυθοπότηρον will be quite intelligible; I don’t think it essential to specify that they are glass (and you’ve got ζυθοχόη 73.5 standing by for beer steins anyway.)

73.15 ἐπιτρᾰπέζ-ιος ὀθόν-η, ἡ. The fact that as a Modern Greek speaker I do a double-take, because οθόνη is now restricted to “screen”, is my problem, not yours. ὀθόνη is good. τραπεζοθόνη (after the Modern τραπεζομάντηλο, from the Latin mantele) is another possibility.

73.17 λόγ-ισμα ἀργῠρίου, ατος, τό. I see the phrase in LSJ, but λόγισμα by itself seems to be unambiguous to me.

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74.16 ψωμ-ίον, τό. Yes, I see it’s the only instance of “bun” in LSJ, but it’s neither fish nor fowl: its sense as “bread” is post-Classical (which is fine), but because of the shift to diminutives, it is the normal Modern word for bread. I’d have preferred πλακοῦς, with some expected cultural translation. If you want a small loaf of bread, which is what Hellenistic ψωμίον is (“a bun for a crocodile”, no less) ἀρτίδιον is there in Diogenes Laertes.

74.20 κιτρᾶτον, τό: a delightful find!

76.3 οὐρὰ ὀχ-ημάτων, ἡ. We do indeed call a queue an οὐρά in Modern Greek (the same metaphor underlies “queue” itself); but I’d have thought στοῖχος is safer.

76.13 ὁδός ἑνὸς δρόμου, ἡ. Modern Greek has μονόδρομος; μονόδρομος ὁδός would be more succinct, at least.

77.2 αὐτο-κῑνούμενον οἰκ-ίδιον [ῑδ], τό, ὑπότροχ-ον οἰκ-ίδιον [ῑδ], τό. τροχόσπιτο in Modern Greek, “wheel-house” (σπίτι < Latin hospitium). I was going to suggest τρόχοικος, but X-οικος in Ancient Greek tends to be bahuvrihi, someone who lives in an X. Given ἁμάξοικος “wagon-dweller” in Strabo, maybe οἰκάμαξα? Cf. ἁρμάμαξα “covered wagon”.

77.8 κῑν-ητό-κυκλον (ὄχ-ημα, ατος), τό. Proposed in https://incubator.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wp/grc/Βικιπαιδεία:Ἀγορά/Λόγιοι_Ἑλληνικοὶ_ὅροι_περὶ_συγχρόνων_ἐννοιῶν for motorbike, I see. But the use of Latin “motor” to mean mechanically propelled motion does not extent to Greek κινητ-, so I don’t see this working. It’s an αὐτοκίνητον δίκυκλον, if you’ll use that calque of birota ~ bicycle…

… Which you haven’t in 77.13: ποδήλᾰτον, τό is indeed what Modern Greek calls bicycles. But you don’t want to emphasise that it is footpowered when it is motorised! https://el.wikipedia.org/wiki/Μοτοσικλέτα speaks of δίτροχα and τρίτροχα in its typology of motorbikes, and that seems safest: αὐτοκίνητον δίτροχον, maybe μηχανοδίτροχον. (The colloquial Modern Greek for motorbike is μηχανάκι, “little machine”.)

At a mininum, change κῑνητό-κυκλον to -τροχον: Greek differentiates wheels from cycles…

77.24 τρίκυκλον [ῐ], τό. … Yes, yes, yes, Modern Greek unthinkingly borrowed tricycle as τρίκυκλο. But it is a τρίτροχον, really. Modern Greek, it turns out, uses τρίτροχο for motorised tricycles (trikes) and τρίκυκλο for foot-driven tricycles.

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78.26 ἀερο-σάκ(κ)ος, ὁ: ἀερόσακκος, surely. That’s the accentuation used in Modern Greek too.

78.28 πέδῑλον χᾰλῑνοῦ, τό, χᾰλῑνός, ὁ. The Katharevousa for this is Herodes Atticus’ τροχοπέδη “the drag or brake of a wheel”, although that’s more associated with trains. (Which indeed is why it shows up in your list under trains, 82.16 τροχο-πέδη ἀσφᾰλ-είας, ἡ). The vernacular for car brake, φρένο, is an Italian loanword, which doesn’t help you.

78.35 ὀχημᾰτῐκὰ γράμματα, τά. I don’t know what this is supposed to be, but Latin litterae tends to be something more document-like than γράμματα.

83.1 ἠλεκτρο-κῑν-ήτη μηχᾰν-ή, ἡ: should be ἠλεκτροκίνητος: don’t get misled by Modern Greek no longer having two-ending adjectives. Ditto 83.3 , 83.9

83.8 κῑν-ητικὴ μηχᾰν-ὴ ἁμαξο-στοιχίας, ἡ. We can do better for locomotive. The default Modern Greek is μηχανή τρένου, “train engine” (lit. “train machine”), but I note that https://el.wikipedia.org/wiki/Μηχανή_σειράς_120_ΟΣΕ, a Wikipedia article on a Greek locomotive, describes it as a μηχανή έλξης, “pulling engine”. So μηχᾰν-ὴ ἕλξεως [ἁμαξοστοιχίας].

84.4 τηλεφόρος δρόμος, ὁ. So much more attractive for “cable car/funicular” than the Modern Greek loan from French, τελεφερίκ (télépherique). It isn’t terribly intuitive though, if you don’t already know the French for cable car.

καλωδιόδρομος does occasionally show up online, and, I have to say, is a little more intuitive. (Not just because it is closer to “cable car”.) But καλωδιόδρομος appears in industrial contexts, not passenger contexts; https://multitran.com/m.exe?a=3&l1=1&l2=38&s=cably renders it as “cable trough”.

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85.8 ἱερὰ ἀποδημ-ία, ἡ, ἱερὰ ὁδοιπορ-ία, ἡ. Clunky for “pilgrimage”, but Modern Greek does not help here: it uses the confusing προσκύνημα “act of worship”, and from what I can tell, that is Early Modern Greek (it’s in Kriaras’ dictionary but not Lampe or Trapp.) Not finding “pilgrim” in Lampe or “Wahlfahrt” in Trapp, but the Oxford Dictionary of Byzantium confirms that the Greek term was προσκύνημα; the Slavonic term, by contrast, was a calque of ὁδοιπορία.

The correct term, then, is προσκύνημα; but given how opaque it will be to non-Greeks, ἱερὰ ὁδοιπορία should be allowed as an alternative.

86.9 ἐπιστολ-ικὸν περι-κάλυμμα [κᾰ], ατος, τό: didn’t I say to get rid of φάκελος in the office context above? Here, you have. But in that case, why is envelope being listed in this dictionary twice?

91.27 κῑβωτο-ειδὲς μαγνητό-φωνον, τό. Modern Greek of course just borrowed “casette” into κασετόφωνο. If you’re calquing “casette” as κιβωτός, I’d be tempted to called this κιβωτόφωνον, but admittedly people would be scratching their heads at that.

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Many thanks again! Please check your mail.

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93.12 στᾰτὸν ὡρολόγ-ιον, τό. The Modern Greek for Grandfather Clock is ρολόι δαπέδου, “floor clock”. I’ll admit it’s not that intuitive. (It was also unfamiliar to me; I thought it was also called a pendulum clock, εκκρεμές.)

94.15 βάτι, τό. In the 1919 Greek school curriculum http://iaen.vima.ekt.gr/ta_programmata_tis_mesis_ekpaidefsis__1833_1929___t__b__-b-29*725.html?search_string=χιλιοβάττιον , the Watt was transcribed as βάττιον, which is more pleasant. I see you’re patterning βάτι after κόμμι; possible, but if you’re going to add a vowel to Watt, you might as well add two. The Latin you’re translating has, after all: vattium.

95.1 ὑπερ-βρᾰχὴ κύματα [ῡ], τά. 95.2 βρᾰχὴ κύματα [ῡ], τά. You mean βραχῆ. Modern Greek couldn’t deal with the Attic contract here, and uses βραχέα.

95.14 νέα, τά. In Modern Greek, this is the colloquial term for “news”; the formal term is εἰδήσεις.

95.15 ἄγγελος. A messenger as a radio/TV announcer! Hm. http://www.wordreference.com/gren/παρουσιαστής says that the current term is “presenter”, παρουσιαστής, and the older term is “announcer” (particular to radio), εκφωνητής. The “give a presentation” sense of παρουσιάζω is Modern. I’d have gone with ἀνακοινωτής, “one who announces, informs”.

97.16 γῠνὴ ὑποκρῐνομένη ἐν τῇ σκήνῃ, γυναικός, ἡ. Notwithstanding that female actors are a recent innovation, I don’t see why you wouldn’t just say ὑποκρίτρια. The fact that in Modern Greek we’ve limited ὑποκριτής to “hypocrite” (Christ’s usage matters), and replaced “actor” with ἠθοποιός, is once again my problem, not yours.

98.10 ὑποστιγμή, ἡ. Yes, that had the function of the comma, but not the form: it was a low dot. I’d prefer διαστολή, if only because Modern Greeks will recognise it as the name of the comma used in ὅ,τι.

98.11 ἄνω τελεία, ἡ. You’re clearly translating by function, not form.

102.19 πολῑτ-ῐκὴ μερ-ίς, ίδος, ἡ, πολῑτ-ῐκὸν κόμμα, ατος, τό. Modern Greek only uses κόμμα, but that’s a quite counterintuitive calque of French partie, as “something cut apart”. I would have thought φρατρία was the more Classical form, and it does get used pejoratively in Modern Greek with reference to partisanship. (Or should I say, even more pejoratively than κόμμα.)

105.9 βᾰσῐλ-εύς, έως, ὁ. That’s a rex, not an imperator; the Byzantines relished in making the point that they had the emperor, and that the Beef-Eaters in the West playing at ruling their fellow barbarians were mere ῥῆγες, reges. (They were not as consistent about the division as I like to think, though.)

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Regarding βᾰσῐλ-εύς, έως, ὁ Liddell & Scott say

3. of the Roman emperors, AP10.25 (Antip. Thess.); “β. Ῥωμαίων” BGU588.10 (i A.D.), etc., cf. 1 Ep.Ti.2.2, J.AJ14.15.14; “β. αὐτοκράτωρ” IG3.13 (Hadrian), Hdn.1.6.5; without Art., Paus.10.32.19.

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I’m not convinced with στεγνωτήρ

στεγν-όω means

A close, πώματι τὸ ἀγγεῖον Gal.17(2).160, cf. 161:—Pass., Hero Spir. 1Praef., al.; of the pores, Gal.18(1).145.
2 make a building watertight, IG11(2).154 A 36, cf. 161 A114 (Delos, iii B.C.): —Pass., of embankments, χώματα ἐστεγνωμένα PSI4.315.25 (ii A.D.).
II make costive, Alex.Aphr.Pr.1 Praef. (Pass.); check discharge, μήτρα ἐστεγνωμένη Dsc.1.23; ὦτα πυορροοῦντα στεγνοῖ Id.2.81.
2 compress, πάπυρος στεγνουμένη Id.1.86; ἔριον μαλακὸν ἐστενωμένον (fort. ἐστεγνωμένον) Heliod. ap. Orib.46.19.2.

I did find στεγνωτήρ in Dimitrakou, but it means orthodontic device.

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Yes, I saw that in the LSJ definition, that στεγνός < στεγανός is properly “watertight”. But with ξηρός properly “dried up”, neither adjective is quite right.

We’re at an impass then: how does Ancient Greek refer to drying hair? ξηρός offends my Modern Sprachgefühl, which is not a strong argument, but does raise a query; you are right that στεγανός would not have started with the right meaning either.

I can find no instances of dry/drying/dried + hair among the Perseus translations corpus. (I am astonished that Perseus’ English search does no stemming, though perhaps I shouldn’t be; you need to search for English inflections separately.) For drying clothes, I can only find Odyssey 6.98 εἵματα δ᾽ ἠελίοιο μένον τερσήμεναι αὐγῇ; but we don’t want a Homeric τέρσομαι here.

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Ancient ships needed to be dried out after spending much time at sea. Thucydides uses ἡ ξηρότης of fresh ships (7.12.3), and ξηρός simply means dry, not necessarily dried up. When they get waterlogged they need to be beached to διαψύξαι them, dry them out by airing them (ib. 4). Hair after bathing will have been dried the same way, in the open air, no hair dryers required. It helps to have a warm climate.

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Our game is to figure out what an ancient Greek would have called a modern thing, if he had seen one.
It seems also to me that the word for hair drier should be something connected with ξηρός. If you object to ξηρο-ποιὸν μηχᾰν-ημα, ατος, τό (which is rather ugly, I admit), why not using (τριχο)-ξηραντήρ
or (τριχο)-ζηραντήριον?

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Since οὐρά can me said of

II. of an army marching, rearguard, rear, X.An.3.4.38, etc.; ἡ οὐ. τοῦ κέρατος rear-rank, ib.6.5.5; κατ᾽ οὐράν τινος ἕπεσθαι to follow in his rear, Id.Cyr.2.3.21, cf. 2.4.3; ὁ κατ᾽ οὐ. the rear-rank man, ib.5.3.45; ἐπ᾽ οὐράν to the rear, Id.Ages.2.2; “εἰς οὐράν” Ael.NA16.33; ἐπ᾽ οὐρᾷ τῶν ἱππέων in rear, X.HG4.3.4; κατ᾽ οὐρὰν προσπίπτειν to attack in rear, Plb.2.67.2.

let’s have both.

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Hair drying: welp, I think Aristotle confirms that it is ξηραίνω and not στεγνόω in Ancient Greek:

Problemata 966b:

ἢ τὰ μὲν ἐκτὸς γίνονται θερμότεροι, τὰ δ’ ἐντὸς περιψύχονται διὰ τὸ βρεχομένων αὐτῶν ἀεὶ ξηραίνεσθαι ὑπὸ τοῦ ἡλίου τὰ πέριξ; τούτων δὲ τοῦτο πασχόντων αἱ τρίχες ξηραινόμεναι λεπτύνονται καὶ πυρροῦνται. καὶ πάντες δὲ οἱ πρὸς ἄρκτον πυρρότριχες καὶ λεπτότριχές εἰσιν.

Or is it because they [fishermen] are warmer in their outer parts, but their inner parts are chilled, because, owing to their getting wet, the surrounding parts are always being dried by the sun? And as they undergo this process, the hair being dried becomes fine and reddish.

Problemata 932b:

Διὰ τί λουσάμενοι τῇ θαλάττῃ θᾶττον ξηραίνονται, βαρυτέρᾳ οὔσῃ τῶν ποτίμων;

Why does one dry more quickly after washing in the sea, although sea water is heavier than fresh?

… OK, I stand humbled here. Modern Greek really does differentiate between something being dry of excess moisture (στεγνώνω), and something being dried stiff, dried of vital moisture (ξεραίνω); clothes and hair normally do the former, and if your hair is doing the latter, it is dry flaky hair; if your clothes do the latter, they have been burned stiff. But this is clearly a Modern innovation, and Modern Greek would never use ξεραίνω the way Pseudo-Aristotle did.

You guys are right about ξηραίνω applying to hair drying in Ancient Greek; but I hope you understand why I had to check; the one-line glosses in LSJ were not enough to rule out that the distinction between excess and vital moisture was older than Modern Greek.

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With ξηραίνω included, LJS has a total of 18 forms! I like ὑποξηραίνω: dry up a little. :smiley:
Anyway, your questioning is always very welcome!

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I’m actually replacing my choices with ἁρμάμαξα and οἰκάμαξα.

I’m going to keep γράμματα for documents:

2. papers, documents, Antipho 1.30, D.36.21, etc. (sg., D.Chr.65.14); τούτων τὰ γ. the documents to prove this, Lys.32.14; “τὰ γ. τῆς δίκης” Ar.Nu.772; τὰ δημόσια γ. the public records, Decr. ap. D.18.55; title-deeds, D.C.65.14; account of loans, D.49.59; “ἐπικαρπίαν ἐν γράμμασιν ἀποφέρειν” Pl. Lg.955d; contract or estimate, BCH46.323 (Teos); catalogue, X.Cyr.7.4.12: in sg., bond, Ev. Luc.16.7; note of hand, J.AJ18.6.3.


There are indeed a few repeated entries.

Any suggestion? How do you call the semicolon in modern Greek when it means … a semicolon?

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Any suggestion? How do you call the semicolon in modern Greek when it means … a semicolon?

You anticipated the answer in your rendering of “?”. It is of course λατινικὴ ἄνω τελεία.

See for example this post, bemoaning the fact that people are increasingly using Roman punctuation in Greek: https://www.verianet.gr/post/34148-o-thanatos-toy-ellinikoy-erotimatikoy

Φτωχή σε λέξεις; φτωχή σε περιεχόμενο; φτωχή σε πνεύμα.
Ξαναδιαβάστε την τελευταία πρόταση της προηγούμενης παραγράφου –σωστά τώρα–, αφού το «φερόμενο» ελληνικό ερωτηματικό που είδατε και προσπεράσατε ήταν η λατινική άνω τελεία.

Impoverished in vocabulary; impoverished in content; impoverished in spirit.
Now re-read the last sentence of the previous paragraph, correctly, since what passed for a Greek interrogative, which you didn’t notice, was the Latin semicolon.

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οἰκάμαξα

I momentarily considered οἰχάμαξα; but… that would be just a tad excessive, wouldn’t it?

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Only available if the license plate says Athens. :laughing:

Thank you for everything. I’ll be sending what I have so far by email.