μύκης

Traditionally taken to be a formation in -ητ- from Proto-Indo-European *mew-k- (“slip, slime”), the same root of Latin mūcus (“snivel”); for the development of meaning, compare Proto-Slavic *glìva (“fungus”) beside Lithuanian gléivės (“slime”), from *gleh₁y- (“to be smeary”).

μῠ́κης • (múkēs) m (genitive μῠ́κητος); third declension

1. mushroom or other fungus
2. any mushroom-shaped object, hence:
   1. chape or cap at the end of a scabbard
   2. penis
   3. fleshy excrescence, such as forms on wounds
   4. (botany) excrescence on trees
   5. stump of an olive cut down
   6. snuff of a lamp-wick

• μῠκήτῐνος (mukḗtinos)

• → Italian: micete
• → Classical Syriac: ܡܘܩܝܛܐ, ܡܝܘܩܝܛܐܣ
• Translingual: Mycetozoa (taxonomic infraphylum)

• “μύκης”, in Liddell & Scott (1940) A Greek–English Lexicon, Oxford: Clarendon Press
• “μύκης”, in Liddell & Scott (1889) An Intermediate Greek–English Lexicon, New York: Harper & Brothers
• μύκης in Bailly, Anatole (1935) Le Grand Bailly: Dictionnaire grec-français, Paris: Hachette
• Furnée, Edzard J. (1972) “μύκης”, in Die wichtigsten konsonantischen Erscheinungen des Vorgriechischen. Mit einem Appendix über den Vokalismus, Den Haag: Mouton, pages 298–99, rejecting a connection to μύσσομαι (mússomai, “to snort, blow one's nose”) (from the same “slime” root), on an assumed basic meaning “prominence, extremity” behind "stump of an olive tree", by comparison with μύσκλοι (múskloi, “stalks of dried up fig trees”) he claims Pre-Greek origin.
• Woodhouse, S. C. (1910) English–Greek Dictionary: A Vocabulary of the Attic Language‎, London: Routledge & Kegan Paul Limited.
  • fungus idem, page 350.
• Beekes, Robert S. P. (2010) “μύκης”, in Etymological Dictionary of Greek (Leiden Indo-European Etymological Dictionary Series; 10), with the assistance of Lucien van Beek, Leiden, Boston: Brill, →ISBN, page 977, repeats Furnée’s claim
• “μύκης”, in ΛΟΓΕΙΟΝ (in English, French, Spanish, German, Dutch and Chinese), University of Chicago, 2011