[B-Greek] on "gloss"
Harold Holmyard
hholmyard at ont.com
Wed Sep 6 19:06:09 EDT 2006
Curtis Hinson wrote:
>The word in it's technical sense refers, I think, to actual marginal
>notes about the use of a word in situ. The word "gloss" is used here
>generally to refer to a word's usage in the context of a specific verse,
>as far as I know.
>
>A "definition" is a broad general description of the word's meaning
>which may attempt to give the semantic range of the word by giving
>several meanings it can have.
>
>I remember in one of my Greek reading classes with the NT some of us had
>Kubo, which is a reader's lexicon. So we thought of Kubo as giving
>glosses for each word in the context of the verse. The professor
>pointed out that actually Kubo doesn't gloss, it merely pulls the major
>definition out of BAGD or some such thing and plops it down. The
>knowledge that we were looking at definitions instead of glosses turned
>us off to it so much that most of us stopped using it entirely. BDAG is
>good because it actually gives a bunch of glosses instead of only giving
>a general definition. That's why it's a must-have. Now if I just had
>BDAG on my PDA since I can't very well lug a hard copy of BDAG around...
>
>
HH: The word "gloss" is pretty flexible according to Encarta Dictionary:
gloss: noun (plural gloss·es)
Definition:
1. explanatory phrase: a short definition, explanation, or translation
of a word or phrase that may be unfamiliar to the reader, often located
in a margin or collected in an appendix or glossary
2. interpretation: an interpretation or explanation of something
Her account provides an interesting gloss on the theme of widowhood
HH: Note that a translation of a word counts as a gloss, as does a short
definition or explanation.
Yours,
Harold Holmyard
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