Origin of ENERGEW

Stephen C. Carlson scarlson at mindspring.com
Sat Dec 28 15:46:35 EST 2002


At 12:25 PM 12/28/02 -0800, Mitch Larramore wrote:
>My book says that ENERGEW comes from the adjective
>ENERGOS. How is this known and is this the normal
>sequence of words [first adjectives are used then
>verbs come from them]?

It is known because the ending of -EW indicates that
the verb is a denominative verb.  Sometimes verbs are
created from nouns/adjectives, sometimes the other way
around (actually verb --> noun/adj appears more common).
There is a whole section of this in Smyth (Part III)
and in most other grammars as well.

>And then I would like to know
>if I need to memorize this kind of data to be real
>good at Greek. [elsewhere, the OS ending was used for
>nouns, but IOS was maybe used of adjectives]

Some study of the word formation endings may be
helpful but as a beginner it is more important to
acquire the basic vocabulary of the texts you want
to read and *read* them.

Stephen Carlson
--
Stephen C. Carlson                        mailto:scarlson at mindspring.com
Synoptic Problem Home Page   http://www.mindspring.com/~scarlson/synopt/
"Poetry speaks of aspirations, and songs chant the words."  Shujing 2.35



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