κλείς

Ancient Greek

From Proto-Hellenic *klāwī́ds, from Proto-Indo-European *kleh₂u- (“nail, pin, hook - instruments, of old use for locking doors”). Cognate with Latin clāvus (“nail, pin”), Old Church Slavonic ключь (ključĭ, “key”).

κλείς • (kleís) f (genitive κλειδός); third declension

bar, bolt
1. a catch or hook passed through the door from the outside to catch the strap attached to the bar
2. key
3. (figurative) a means to something; key
hook or tongue of a clasp
1. stopcock
(anatomy) collarbone (probably so called from its hook shape)
(in the plural) rowing bench of a ship
narrow strait, promontory or pass
(in the plural) sacred chaplets
(poetry) clausula, cadence

Case / #	Singular	Dual	Plural
Nominative	ἡ κλείς hē kleís	τὼ κλεῖδε tṑ kleîde	αἱ κλεῖδες / κλεῖς hai kleîdes / kleîs
Genitive	τῆς κλειδός tês kleidós	τοῖν κλειδοῖν toîn kleidoîn	τῶν κλειδῶν tôn kleidôn
Dative	τῇ κλειδῐ́ têi kleidí	τοῖν κλειδοῖν toîn kleidoîn	ταῖς κλεισῐ́ / κλεισῐ́ν taîs kleisí(n)
Accusative	τὴν κλεῖδᾰ / κλεῖν tḕn kleîda / kleîn	τὼ κλεῖδε tṑ kleîde	τᾱ̀ς κλεῖδᾰς / κλεῖς tā̀s kleîdas / kleîs
Vocative	κλείς kleís	κλεῖδε kleîde	κλεῖδες / κλεῖς kleîdes / kleîs
Notes:	This table gives Attic inflectional endings. For declension in other dialects, see Appendix:Ancient Greek dialectal declension. Nominative singular -ς (-s) arose by reduction of the original cluster *-ds.

Descendants of κλείς in other languages

→ Aghwan: 𐕄𐔼𐔾𐕜 (ḳilṭ)
→ Aramaic: קלידא
- Classical Syriac: ܩܠܝܕܐ (qəlīḏāʾ)
- Jewish Babylonian Aramaic: אַקְלִידָא (ʾaqlīḏāʾ)
- → Arabic: إِقْلِيد (ʔiqlīd)
- → Hebrew: קְלִיד (qəlîḏ)
→ English: cleido-
⇒ New Latin: sternocleidomastoīdēs, sternocleidomastoīdeus
- → English: sternocleidomastoid, sternocleidomastoideus
→ Old Georgian: კლიტჱ (ḳliṭē)
- Georgian: კლიტე (ḳliṭe), კილტე (ḳilṭe) — Adjara, Guria, Fereydan
  - → Bats: კლიტ (ḳliṭ)
→ Persian: کلید (kelid)
- → Azerbaijani: kilid
- → Kazakh: кілт (kılt)
- → Northern Kurdish: kilîd
- → Ottoman Turkish: كلید (kilid), كلیت (kilit)
  - Turkish: kilit
- → Uzbek: kalit

“κλείς”, in Liddell & Scott (1940) A Greek–English Lexicon, Oxford: Clarendon Press
“κλείς”, in Liddell & Scott (1889) An Intermediate Greek–English Lexicon, New York: Harper & Brothers
κλείς in Bailly, Anatole (1935) Le Grand Bailly: Dictionnaire grec-français, Paris: Hachette
Bauer, Walter et al. (2001) A Greek–English Lexicon of the New Testament and Other Early Christian Literature, Third edition, Chicago: University of Chicago Press
G2807 in Strong, James (1979) Strong’s Exhaustive Concordance to the Bible
Woodhouse, S. C. (1910) English–Greek Dictionary: A Vocabulary of the Attic Language‎, London: Routledge & Kegan Paul Limited.
- collar-bone idem, page 143.