The root of all gluttony

The etymological analysis of Attic Greek τένθης ‘gourmand, glutton’ (Ar.+) has focused since Antiquity on comparison with the obscure Hesiodic hapax τένδει (Op. 524). Rejecting this unpromising solution, in this paper I go back to a forgotten proposal by Solmsen (1897), who compared τένθης with the PN Πενθεύς ~ Τενθεύς and Lat. condiō ‘to season (food)’, reconstructing a root *kwendh-/*kwondh-. While Solmsen did not pursue further analysis of this root, I propose that it arose - possibly already at the PIE stage - from *kwem- ‘gulp, swallow’ with addition of the “detransitivizing” suffix *-dh-e/o-. The present stem *kwem-dhe/o- would have had the intransitive meaning ‘to swallow food’ with Indefinite Object Deletion, as is typologically common in “ingestive” verbs. In addition to the agent noun τένθης, I suggest that πάθνη ~ φάτνη ‘crib, manger’ was another nominal derivative of the ‘neo-root’ *kwendh-/*kwondh-/*kwn̥dh-. I conclude by discussing other possible etymologies of Lat. condiō

Art · Epistemology · Linguistics · Literature · Manger · Meaning (existential) · Noun · Object (grammar) · Root (linguistics) · Suffix · Theology · Verb · Ancient Near East History · Classical Antiquity Studies · History · Linguistics and language evolution · Mathematics · Philosophy