κράσπεδον

Ancient Greek

Etymology

Unknown. Traditionally analyzed as an old compound of κάρᾱ (kárā, “head”) (in the form κράσ-), with a faded second member πέδον (pédon, “plain, ground”), for which Sanskrit द्रुपद (drupada, “wooden pillar, post”) is compared. The first member would point to an original meaning "upper border", according to Risch. However, Nussbaum is very sceptical; there is no indication whatsoever that it would contain the word for "head".

Pronunciation

Noun

κρᾰ́σπεδον • (kráspedon) n (genitive κρᾰσπέδου); second declension

1. edge, border, skirt, especially of cloth
   • 300 BCE – 200 BCE, Theocritus, Collected Works 2.53
   • 250 CE – 350 CE, Athenaeus, Deipnosophistae 374A
   • 431 BCE, Euripides, Medea 524
   • 422 BCE, Aristophanes, The Wasps 475
   • 497 BCE – 405 BCE, Sophocles, Fragments 536
   • 480 BCE – 406 BCE, Euripides, Fragments 382
   • 430 BCE – 354 BCE, Xenophon, Hellenica 4.6.8
   • 423 BCE, Euripides, The Suppliants 661
   • 430 BCE – 354 BCE, Xenophon, Hellenica 3.2.16
2. (mostly in the plural) skirts or edge of a country
3. (pathology) fimbria, affection of the uvula

Declension

Derived terms

Descendants

• → English: craspedophyte
• Greek: κράσπεδο (kráspedo)

Further reading

• “κράσπεδον”, in Liddell & Scott (1940) A Greek–English Lexicon, Oxford: Clarendon Press
• “κράσπεδον”, in Liddell & Scott (1889) An Intermediate Greek–English Lexicon, New York: Harper & Brothers
• κράσπεδον in Bailly, Anatole (1935) Le Grand Bailly: Dictionnaire grec-français, Paris: Hachette
• G2899 in Strong, James (1979) Strong’s Exhaustive Concordance to the Bible
• Beekes, Robert S. P. (2010) Etymological Dictionary of Greek (Leiden Indo-European Etymological Dictionary Series; 10), with the assistance of Lucien van Beek, Leiden, Boston: Brill, →ISBN