Words Classified By Roots
Carl W. Conrad
cwconrad at artsci.wustl.edu
Thu Sep 7 08:24:44 EDT 2000
At 6:14 PM +1000 9/7/00, Roger Birch wrote:
>Recently, I have been doing some reading on classification of words
>acording to their roots with a view to helping build my overall Greek
>vocabulary.
>
I think this can indeed be a valuable exercise, particularly as it involves
recognition of cognates in verbs, nouns, adjectives, and the like.
>However, a friend, who has a very different theological position to my
>own, recently gave me some of his Greek material regarding the root of the
>word QEOS, claiming its root is QE (from which TIQHMI comes) and hence has
>an underlying meaning of 'Placer'.
>
>I have looked through Metzger's Lexical Aids for Students of NT Greek in
>which QEOS is not included under the root of QE, and also a number of
>other books such as those by Van Voorst and Trenchard where the cognates
>for QEOS and TIQHMI are kept separate. I also note that in Mounce's
>Morphology of Biblical Greek (p.41), he quotes the root of QEOS as being
>QESO from which the intervocalic sigma has dropped out but the resulting
>EO have not contracted.
>
>Does anyone have a definitive source for studies into the roots of words?
>I am particularly interested in the root for QEOS and would like to know,
>for example, if Mounce's claim be supported from elsewhere?
I've checked two rather old etymological dictionaries of Greek
(Boisacq,Dict. de la etymologie grecque; J.B.Hofmann, Etymologisches
Woerterbuch des Griechischen) and find no attempt to link the QE- of QEOS
with QH/QE of the verb TIQHMI; both seem to find the link with IE *dhês-,
Latin fês- (e.g. fêstus, fêriae) likely. The root QES- would seem also to
be constated by such very old Greek words as QES-PIS and QES-FATOS.
>As a more general comment, the English word 'dog' doesn't come from a root
>of 'do', so just how far can we take root studies, and how certain can we
>be about them?
>
>Any comments would be useful.
Generally speaking, etymology is an entertaining game to play and can be
illuminating about cognates if great care is taken in stictly observing the
working of Grimm's law in seeking cognates; BUT etymology is nigh unto
totally useless in determining usage of a word at a particular time and
place--it's not infrequent that awareness of etymological background has
been shown to be quite misleading regarding meanings to be attributed in a
given chronological and geographical context of use.
--
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
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