[B-Greek] MHDEN and DE

Carl W. Conrad cwconrad at artsci.wustl.edu
Wed Apr 19 19:31:54 EDT 2006


On Apr 19, 2006, at 7:15 PM, Bert de Haan wrote:

> Carl Conrad, you wrote on Wed, 19 Apr 2006  in relation to the  
> thread -Re:
> [B-Greek] Matt. 28:1 OPSE restored to "late" vs "before"-:
>
> [quote]
> In your post yesterday you attempted?
> to relate DE to OUDEN and MHDEN, which would be valid enough for?
> later and especially MODERN Greek, but which is altogether irrelevant?
> to ancient Greek and the DE which is a standard connective/
> contrastive particle in ancient Greek as far back as Homer.[end of  
> quote]
>
> I don't understand. You don't mean OUDE with a Nu movable do you?  
> (I think
> the Epsilon elides rather than a Nu getting added.) You must mean  
> OUDEN as
> the neuter of OUDEIS.  I am not sure what you meant by "...to  
> relate DE to
> OUDEN and MHDEN..."  I looked up MHDEN in Cunliffe, Middle Liddell and
> Thayers and they all say something like (This is from Liddell;) MHD- 
> EIS,
> MHDE-MIA, MHD-EN, (i.e. MHDE hEIS, MHDE MIA, MHDE hEN.  And  
> concerning MHDE
> it says; MHDE. (MH, DE)
>
> All this makes me think that you were not talking about an  
> etymological
> relationship because there does seem to be one.  Can you elaborate  
> on what
> you did mean?

Glad to do so. Essentially OUDEN (neuter sg. acc. of OUDEIS, OUDEMIA,  
OUDEN) functioned as an adverb meaning "not at all." I'm not sure at  
what point in Medieval or early Modern Greek it came to be the  
standard negative replacing OU, probably originally as OUDEN, then  
simply as DEN. But no, it is not related to OUDE but rather to the  
compound of OUDE + hEIS, MIA, hEN.


Carl W. Conrad
Department of Classics, Washington University (Emeritus)
1989 Grindstaff Road/Burnsville, NC 28714/(828) 675-4243
cwconrad2 at mac.com
WWW: http://www.ioa.com/~cwconrad/




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