μαλλός

Of uncertain origin.

The connection with Lithuanian mìlas (“coarse wool”) has been abandoned. Greppin suggests that Armenian մալ (mal, “cattle”) is cognate with the Greek word. The Greek word only denotes the "flock of wool" and never the animal, but this may be a later semantic development. An Indo-European form *mh₂l- is rather improbable, however. The word may well be of substrate origin, with Beekes suggesting a borrowing from Pre-Greek, and Clackson suggesting a borrowing from Arabic, the latter which is also the prevailing theory for the Armenian cognate.^[1]

μαλλός • (mallós) m (genitive μαλλοῦ); second declension

1. flock of wool
2. tress, braid of hair

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