ὀπτός
Word
Validation
Yes
Word-form
ὄψον
Word-lemma
Etymon-lemma
Transliteration (Word)
opson
English translation (word)
cooked food eaten with bread
Transliteration (Etymon)
optos
English translation (etymon)
roasted, broiled
Century
11 AD
Source
Idem
Ref.
Etym. Gudianum, omicron, p. 446
Ed.
F.W. Sturz, Etymologicum Graecae linguae Gudianum et alia grammaticorum scripta e codicibus manuscriptis nunc primum edita, Leipzig: Weigel, 1818 (repr. Hildesheim: Olms, 1973): 229-584
Quotation
Ὄψον, σημαίνει τὸ προσφάγιον, ἐκ τοῦ ὀπτῶ γίνεται ὄπτον καὶ τροπῇ τοῦ τ εἰς σ, καὶ κράσει τοῦ πσ εἰς ψ ὄψον
Translation (En)
Opson "cooked food" means food eaten on bread, it comes from optô "to roast", opton "roasted", and through a change of the [t] into [s], and crasis of the ps into <the letter> psi, opson
Parallels
Etym. Magnum, Kallierges p. 646 (idem).
The etymology is certainly much older and may be found as an implicit etymology (or a mere pun?) in Aristophanes' Equites, 1105-1106 (ἐγὼ δὲ μαζίσκας γε διαμεμαγμένας | καὶ τοὔψον ὀπτόν· μηδὲν ἄλλ’ εἰ μὴ ’σθιε), and in Hippocrates, De diaeta salubri 1 (τὰ δὲ σιτία ἄρτον καὶ τὰ ὄψα ὀπτὰ πάντα)
Modern etymology
The etymology is not clear. The word belongs probably with ὀπτός "cooked, roasted", ὀπτάω "to roast", but has also been connected with ὀπί "on, after", a derivative of which is ὀψέ "late" (Beekes, EDG)
Persistence in Modern Greek
The word is lost in Modern Standard Greek, but the derivative ὀψάριον occurs in Medieval vernacular Greek and also in the contemporary Pontiac dialect. Today there is ψάρι "fish" (Em. Kriaras Dictionary of Mediev. Vernacular Greek, vol. 14, s.v.).
Entry By
Le Feuvre
Comment
This descriptive etymology refers to a feature of the ὄψον, the fact that it is cooked food, relating it to ὀπτάω "to roast" and to the participle ὀπτός. It implies a formal manipulation, the change of a consonant into another one. It is interesting from the formal point of view as it shows clearly that Greek scholars were operating with written letters, not with sounds, the letter ‹ψ›, phonetically [ps], being described as a "crasis", a mixture, of [p] and [s]: that does not make any sense if one thinks in phonetic terms (there are two successive consonants, [p] and [s]), but only if one thinks in graphical terms (there is one grapheme only)