σφενδόνη

Often connected with σφεδανός (sphedanós), σφοδρός (sphodrós), σφαδάζω (sphadázō), and Sanskrit स्पन्दते (spandate, “to vibrate, tremble, quake”), as well as with Latin funda (“sling”), with formation structure similar to that of ἀγχόνη (ankhónē), βελόνη (belónē), and περόνη (perónē). The similarity with the Latin term suggests a Mediterranean, Anatolian, and/or Pre-Greek borrowing for both.^[1]

σφενδόνη • (sphendónē) f (genitive σφενδόνης); first declension

1. a sling
   • 800 BCE – 600 BCE, Homer, Iliad 13.600
   • 680 BCE – 645 BCE, Archilochus, Collected Works 3
   • 408 BCE, Euripides, The Phoenician Women 1142
   • 414 BCE, Aristophanes, The Birds 1185
   • 460 BCE – 395 BCE, Thucydides, History of the Peloponnesian War 4.32
   • 408 BCE – 334 BCE, Antiphanes Comicus, Collected Works 55.19
   1. a sling as part of a crane used in unloading ships
      • Sylloge Inscriptionum Graecarum 241
      • A 46
      • 458 BCE, Aeschylus, Agamemnon 1010
2. anything fundiform:
   1. (medicine) a sling:
      1. for a disabled arm
         • 460 BCE – 370 BCE, Hippocrates, On Joints 16
      2. a suspensory abdominal bandage
         • 460 BCE – 370 BCE, Hippocrates, On the Diseases of Women 2.144
         • 50 CE – 150 CE, Soranus, Fasc. 48
   2. a headband worn by women, broad in front
      • Poll. 5.96
      • 1115 – 1195, Eustathius of Thessalonica, ad D.P. 7
   3. a bezel, a collet (the hoop of a ring in which the gemstone is set as in a sling; especially, the outer or broader part round the stone)
      • 428 BCE, Euripides, Hippolytus 862
      • 380 BCE, Plato, The Republic 359e
      • 384 BCE – 322 BCE, Aristotle, Physics 207a.3
   4. a sclera (the white of an eye)
      • ante 177 CE, Pollux, Onomasticon 2.70
3. a slingstone (a stone, bullet, or other such missile or projectile thrown by a sling)

   Synonym: χερμᾰ́ς (khermás)

   • 430 BCE – 354 BCE, Xenophon, Anabasis 3.4.4
   • 430 BCE – 354 BCE, Xenophon, Anabasis 5.2.14
   1. a hailstone
      • 423 BCE, Aristophanes, The Clouds 1125

• Greek: σφεντόνα (sfentóna)

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