A burning question. On the etymologies of Greek κήλων ‘stud’

• Alcorac Alonso Déniz ^[1]
  1. [1] CNRS / Laboratoire HiSoMA
• Localización: Historische Sprachforschung = Historical linguistics, ISSN 0935-3518, Nº. 133, 2020, págs. 4-26
• Idioma: inglés
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• Resumen

  • This paper examines the meaning and origin of the Ancient Greek noun κήλων ‘stud animal’, which survives in certain dialects of Modern Greek. According to modern scholars, κήλων is a possessive denominative either of κῆλον ‘dart’, which was allegedly used to refer to the ‘penis’, or of an unattested *kālo- ‘testicle’. To the contrary, I argue that κήλων originates with the adjective κηλός ‘burnt’ or ‘burning’ (< *keh2-elo-), which is a deverbative form of καίω (< *keh2-), documented in two poetic compounds (περίκηλος, εὔκηλος). The semantic evolution of the noun κήλων ‘one that is burnt or is burning (by/with sexual desire)’ > ‘stud’, rests on the familiar conceptual metaphor SEXUAL AROUSAL IS FIRE.