Origin of ENERGEW

Carl W. Conrad cwconrad at artsci.wustl.edu
Sat Dec 28 15:53:55 EST 2002


At 12:25 PM -0800 12/28/02, Mitch Larramore wrote:
>My book says that ENERGEW comes from the adjective
>ENERGOS.

Which book is that? Neither LSJ nor BDAG offers any etymology for the verb.

>How is this known and is this the normal
>sequence of words [first adjectives are used then
>verbs come from them]?

-EW verbs may be "denominative," i.e. derive from a noun or adjective, but
they do not uniformly so derive. It would appear that ENERGOS is commonly
used in Attic, but that in the GNT the standard form of the adjective is
ENERGHS, more directly related to the verb with its -E- stem. I don't think
one could lay down such a rule that cognate adjectives precede the
formation of cognate verbs.

>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]

What is definitely worthwhile is learning cognate words like ENERGEW,
ENERGHS, and ENERGEIA--and even the broader group of cognates of ERGON,
such as ARGOS (A-ERGOS), KATARGEW, KTL. as a group, so as to envisage the
relationships of these forms and their meanings. Moreover, although it is
not generally taught in a first-year or even a second-year course, it would
be very much worth one's while to familiarize oneself with materials such
as set forth on Word Formation in Smyth's grammar, §§822-899 (pp. 225-254);
some time spent in the study of these sections can save one a lot of time
and effort spent in a lexicon checking words whose meaning can be guessed
intelligently by virtue of understanding the process of Greek
word-formation.
-- 

Carl W. Conrad
Department of Classics, Washington University (Emeritus)
1989 Grindstaff Road/Burnsville, NC 28714/(828) 675-4243
cwconrad at artsci.wustl.edu OR cwconrad at ioa.com
WWW: http://www.ioa.com/~cwconrad/



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