DIAFERW (was "Re: Philippians 1:9-11")

Carl W. Conrad cwconrad at artsci.wustl.edu
Tue Sep 21 17:29:08 EDT 1999


I want to add just a little bit more to this thread which I really think
has been very useful in terms of investigation of the range of word
meanings for this verb.

At 1:53 PM +0100 9/21/99, Michael Haggett wrote:
>|Dr Alexander Hopkins wrote:
>|I have been following the Phil 1:9-11 strand with more interest than time.
>|Michael Haggett wrote of DIAFERW and its meaning, "I'm not at all sure that
>|DIAFERW ever means 'be better than' except by a tortuous route.  Apart from
>|the fairly obvious 'carry across' meaning, the other meaning is either 'to
>|be different' or 'to make a difference'."
>|
>|I rather think that to speak of DIAFERW as having a "fairly obvious"
>|meaning and an "other" meaning is a little unkind to the word, for it has a
>|breadth of meanings.
>
>What I meant by here by "fairly obvious" was not that it was a "more
>important" (excuse the pun ;-)) meaning, but that the derivation of that
>particular meaning seemed to be clear, i.e. DIA-FERW = carry across, or
>carry through.  I stand I awe of the range of meanings that Dr Hopkins and
>Carl before him have shown, but a predilection of mine is to try and
>figure out a "root meaning" which would then explain the breadth of
>meanings that we can find in the texts and lexicons.  

In essence I really think this is an excellent way to go about word-study,
and I have often enough urged this sort of systematic study in an
unabridged lexicon.
There are, however, one or two caveats bearing on this procedure.

(1) When the word, especially a verb, with which one is dealing is a
compound, one needs to pay attention to the range of meanings in the
simplex of the verb, (in this instance FERW) and also to the range of
meanings that the prefix (in this instance DIA-) may have in compounding.
If one looks at the LSJ entries under DIAFERW, one sees not ONE fundamental
sense from which one can trace all the other meanings as derivative in one
way or another, but in fact several; as FERW can have the different senses
of "carry" and "endure," and as DIA- in compounding can have several
different senses of "through/across," "apart," "pre-eminently," "to the
end," an intensifying force and a sense of intermediacy (s.v. DIA [D] IN
COMPOS.) so the compounded verb may branch off in any of these directions
in which the simplex and the adverbial prefix may point. That is why LSJ
indicates four distinct basic senses for DIAFERW: I. "carry over or across"
with extended senses of temporal duration, physical endurance, and
sustaining; II. carry apart, including "disseminate," "tear asunder," and
"vote differently"; III. "make a difference," including "be
different/surpass/excel"; and IV. "differ," "be at a variance."
Understanding and explanation of usage, then, depend upon more extensive
analysis than ascertaining a fundamental notion and tracing the extended
senses as ramifications of that one fundamental notion; there may be two or
more fundamental notions involved.

(2) Another important factor that is periodically called attention to on
B-Greek is the peril of dependence upon etymology to explain meaning when
usage carries a word or root or combination of roots into a very
specialized sense that is not at all or not readily deducible from
etymology. One example of this is the noun hUPHRETHS and the cognate verb
hUPHRETEW; these derive ultimately from the terms for rowers in subordinate
ranks in the Athenian navy, but they come fairly early to take on the
broader sense of "servant," "subordinate," "assistant," and the verbal
notions of "serve." No few words in Greek have meanings in context in a
particular time and place that simply cannot be deduced from their original
etymology, even where one can be reasonably sure of the original
etymology--as often enough one cannot be.

I would certainly recommend careful word-study of expanded
entries--including the broad array of examples for each usage--for
important words in the unabridged lexica; it is time-consuming, but it can
do more to strengthen one's sense of actual usage than anything else one
can do in the acquisition of vocabulary.


Carl W. Conrad
Department of Classics/Washington University
One Brookings Drive/St. Louis, MO, USA 63130/(314) 935-4018
Home: 7222 Colgate Ave./St. Louis, MO 63130/(314) 726-5649
cwconrad at artsci.wustl.edu
WWW: http://www.artsci.wustl.edu/~cwconrad/
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