From: Carl W. Conrad (cwconrad@artsci.wustl.edu)
Date: Thu Sep 07 2000 - 08:24:44 EDT
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Roots</title></head><body>
<div>At 6:14 PM +1000 9/7/00, Roger Birch wrote:</div>
<blockquote type="cite" cite><font face="Arial" size="-1">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.</font></blockquote>
<blockquote type="cite" cite> </blockquote>
<div><br></div>
<div>I think this can indeed be a valuable exercise, particularly as
it involves recognition of cognates in verbs, nouns, adjectives, and
the like.</div>
<div><br></div>
<blockquote type="cite" cite><font face="Arial" size="-1">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'.</font></blockquote>
<blockquote type="cite" cite> </blockquote>
<blockquote type="cite" cite><font face="Arial" size="-1">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.</font></blockquote>
<blockquote type="cite" cite> </blockquote>
<blockquote type="cite" cite><font face="Arial" size="-1">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?</font></blockquote>
<div><br></div>
<div>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.</div>
<div><br></div>
<blockquote type="cite" cite><font face="Arial" size="-1">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? </font></blockquote>
<blockquote type="cite" cite> </blockquote>
<blockquote type="cite" cite><font face="Arial" size="-1">Any comments
would be useful.</font></blockquote>
<div><br></div>
<div>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.</div>
<div><br></div>
<div>-- <br>
<br>
Carl W. Conrad<br>
Department of Classics/Washington University<br>
One Brookings Drive/St. Louis, MO, USA 63130/(314) 935-4018<br>
Home: 7222 Colgate Ave./St. Louis, MO 63130/(314) 726-5649<br>
cwconrad@artsci.wustl.edu </div>
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