κισσός

• κιττός (kittós)

According to Beekes, from Pre-Greek. Furnée compares κιθάρα (kithára), in the sense of "ivy".

Janda^[1] derives the word from Proto-Indo-European *kitw-ó-, interpreted as “belonging to a tree, mark, sacrificial post”, ultimately from *keyt- (“shine, glow”). He connects the Greek word to Sanskrit केतु (ketú, “brightness, rays of light, apparition, sign, mark, flag”) in the sense of “sacrificial post”, used synonymously with Sanskrit केतु (sváru, “large piece of wood, stake, sacrificial post”), furthermore to Old Norse Heiðrún and heiðvanr (“holy, connected to heaven”). Both the adjective and the mythical goat from Norse mythology are associated with the cosmological ash tree Yggdrasil.

κισσός • (kissós) m (genitive κισσοῦ); second declension

1. ivy (Hedera helix), sacred to Dionysus

• Greek: κισσός (kissós)
• → Arabic: قِسُّوس (qissūs)
  • → Old Spanish: caçuz (not to be confused with descendants of عِرْق السُوس (ʕirq as-sūs))

• “κισσός”, in Liddell & Scott (1940) A Greek–English Lexicon, Oxford: Clarendon Press
• “κισσός”, in Liddell & Scott (1889) An Intermediate Greek–English Lexicon, New York: Harper & Brothers
• κισσός 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