ἴονθος

May belong to a word for "hair", which appears in Middle Irish find (“hair”), Dutch wenkbrauw (“eyebrow”), Old Prussian wanso (“first beard”) and Proto-Slavic *ǫsъ (“moustache”). The Greek word would have to represent a reduplicated formation *ϝί-ϝονθος (*wí-wonthos). All these words have been interpreted as verbal nouns from Proto-Indo-European *wendʰ- (“hair, wool, beard”).

For a similar semantic shift compare Georgian თმა (tma, “hair”) ~ Svan შდო̈მ (šdöm, “rash”).

ἴονθος • (íonthos) m (genitive ἰόνθου); second declension

1. root of a hair, downy hair
2. eruption on the face, which accompanies the first growth of the beard

• “ἴονθος”, in Liddell & Scott (1940) A Greek–English Lexicon, Oxford: Clarendon Press
• “ἴονθος”, in Liddell & Scott (1889) An Intermediate Greek–English Lexicon, New York: Harper & Brothers
• ἴονθος in Bailly, Anatole (1935) Le Grand Bailly: Dictionnaire grec-français, Paris: Hachette
• 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