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The Etymology of ΠΕΡΙΣΤΤΡΑ and Some Allied Words1

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 February 2009

A. C. Moorhouse
Affiliation:
University College, Swansea

Extract

It is proposed to account here for a number of words with closely allied forms but different meanings: περιοτερα ‘pigeon’ περωτερις ‘vervain’ and ‘a woman's ornament’ ‘vervain’, ‘a woman's ornament’, and diminutive of περωτερις There are several other by-forms, as may be seen by reference to LSJ, but they add nothing to the well-established partition of meaning in this stem between the three senses ‘pigeon’, ‘vervain’, and ‘a woman's ornament’. It is my belief that we must explain the three senses together, and this I shall attempt to do.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © The Classical Association 1950

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References

page 74 note 1 It is perhaps better called a principle than a law, since it does not appear to operate with the strictness which we expect of phonetic laws. I have dealt with the question of the rhythmical basis of the form which was preferred toin The Morphology of the Greek Comparative System: its Rhythmical and Repetitive Features“, A.J.P. vol. lxx (1949), pp. 159–70Google Scholar. For that reason I prefer not to discuss it more preferred fully here.

page 75 note 1 The exact nature of the termination of this word (a contraction of-ca?) and its accentuation are hard to explain. But Bechtel reminds us, Griech. Dial, ii, p. 295, that it is often difficult to discover the exact original form of the Laconian words in Hesychius, and we may dispense with that labour here.

page 75 note 2 Prof. Richardson has pointed out to me that a form with lengthened vowel could be ruled out by similarity to (from).

page 75 note 3 Emended by Porson to περαινερνιον. But the change is not necessary, and the second deftion of Photius seems to show that he did not really know what sort of ornament it was, and that he was hazarding a guess in the word is also found in Pollux, in a list of various see Kock, Com. Adesp. 1115.