θαλλός

Ancient Greek

Etymology

From Proto-Indo-European *dʰelh₁- (“to bloom, be green”), whence also θάλλω (thállō, “to bloom”). Compare Welsh dail (“leaves”) and Middle Irish duille (“foliage”). The sense “gift” comes about as a semantic loan from Egyptian, where two etymologically unrelated terms mnḥ (“papyrus stalk”) and mnḥtj (“tribute, gift”) were homophonous in Late Egyptian.

Pronunciation

Noun

θᾰλλός • (thallós) m (genitive θᾰλλοῦ); second declension

1. (botany) young shoot, young branch (especially of the olive)

   Synonyms: ἔρνος (érnos), ὄρπηξ (órpēx), πτόρθος (ptórthos), τέρχνος (térkhnos)

2. (in the plural) palm leaves, which were plaited into baskets
3. a gift, especially one given at festivals, or given to a landlord by one whose bid for a lease was accepted

Inflection

Derived terms

Descendants

• Greek: θαλλός (thallós)
• → English: thallus
• → Italian: tallo
• → Sicilian: taḍḍu

Further reading

• “θαλλός”, in Liddell & Scott (1940) A Greek–English Lexicon, Oxford: Clarendon Press
• “θαλλός”, in Liddell & Scott (1889) An Intermediate Greek–English Lexicon, New York: Harper & Brothers
• “θαλλός”, in Autenrieth, Georg (1891) A Homeric Dictionary for Schools and Colleges, New York: Harper and Brothers
• θαλλός 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