International Linguistic Association
Co-Sponsored by the Department of English
John Jay College of Criminal Justice
Edwin D. Floyd
University of Pittsburgh
The Etymology and Early Use of Greek Sophos ‘Wise’
Pretty much everyone with an interest in words knows that Greek sophos (‘wise’, etc.) underlies English
‘philosophy’, ‘sophomore’, ‘sophist’, etc. – but can one go beyond Greek to proto-Indo-European?
Neither Frisk nor Chantraine in their respective Greek etymological dictionaries does so, but I suggest
that we can, if we consider the earliest attestations of soph-. Homer, Iliad 15.412 uses the derivative
sophie ‘what the sophos man / woman does’, in a context of battle-lines being inexorably measured out.
Measurement is also latent in the combination of sophos with kubernetes ‘helmsman’ at Archilochus, fr.
211, inasmuch as the good helmsman must always know his ship’s location accurately.
Working from these and other archaic Greek examples, I have utilized Starostin’s reworking, available
online at http://dnghu.org/indoeuropean.html of Pokorny’s Indogermanisches Etymologisches
Wörterbuch. What I posit is a phonologically straightforward connection of soph- with Pokorny’s root
dheubh-, dhubh- ‘spike, wedge, etc.’ Besides fitting easily into recognized Greek sound changes, the
resulting semantic associations of soph- fit the various archaic Greek contexts admirably. At Iliad
15.412, for instance, the chalk-line (stathme), previously mentioned at line 410, must surely be held in
place by some kind of spikes, and the Archilochus fragment equally falls into place, since it includes the
word triainan ‘trident, three-pronged fork’.
Saturday, November 10, 2012
11 AM - 12 PM
John Jay College of Criminal Justice
Room: L2.82
524 West 59th Street (between 10th and 11th Avenues)
New York, NY 10019
Contact: Dr. Effie Cochran, [email protected].
www.ilaword.org