''Terpsimbrotos'' is a type of
linguistic compound (inflectional verbal compounds, German ''verbales Rektionskompositum'') where the first part ends in ''-ti'' or ''-si'' in Greek or Sanskrit.
[George Dunkel]
"Two old problems in Greek: ptolemos and terpsimbrotos"
''Glotta'' 70 (1992). It is on a par with the
bahuvrihi
A bahuvrīhi, or bahuvrīhi compound, is a type of compound word that denotes a referent by specifying a certain characteristic or quality the referent possesses. A bahuvrihi is exocentric, so that the compound is not a hyponym of its head. For ...
and
tatpurusha
Sanskrit inherits from its parent, the Proto-Indo-European language, the capability of forming compound nouns, also widely seen in kindred languages, especially German, Greek, and English.
However, Sanskrit, especially in the later stages of th ...
types. It is derived from a finite verbal phrase, the verbal inflection still visible at the juncture of the compound members. ''Terpsimbrotos'' (τερψίμβροτος) is itself a
Greek
Greek may refer to:
Anything of, from, or related to Greece, a country in Southern Europe:
*Greeks, an ethnic group
*Greek language, a branch of the Indo-European language family
**Proto-Greek language, the assumed last common ancestor of all kno ...
example of such a compound, consisting of ''terpsi'' (either from ''terp-ti-'' or from ''terp-si-'') "gladdens" and ''mbrotos'' "mortals" (cf. ἀμβροσία
a-mbrosia''">Ambrosia.html" ;"title="'Ambrosia">a-mbrosia''; a ''terpsimbrotos'' is thus something or somebody that "gladdens mortals". The word appears in the ''Odyssey'' and in the Homeric hymn to Apollo as an epitheton of Helios.
Opinions as to what form exactly is reflected by this type of compound are divided. Dunkel (1992) compares the Vedic Sanskrit, Vedic ''-si-'' imperatives, connected with the aorist system, apparently by haplology along the lines of ''vak-sa-si'' > ''vaksi''.
[
''Bē-t-harmōn'' (βητάρμων) "driving the wheel", a Homeric Greek, Homeric compound, was also postulated as a similar type of compound, though lacking the ''-i-'' of ''terpsimbrotos''. If correctly analysed, this would support the ''-ti-'' analysis of ''terpsi-''. Dunkel traces the origin of the ''pt-'' in πτόλεμος 'ptolemos''(vs. earlier πόλεμος 'polemos'' "war" to a re-analysis of such a compound, ''*phere-t-polemos'', metathesised to φερεπτόλεμος 'phere-ptolemos''
''Phere-oikos'' (φερέοικος) "house-carrier", "carries-his-house", a term used for a ]snail
A snail is a shelled gastropod. The name is most often applied to land snails, terrestrial molluscs, terrestrial pulmonate gastropod molluscs. However, the common name ''snail'' is also used for most of the members of the molluscan class Gas ...
by Hesiod
Hesiod ( or ; ''Hēsíodos''; ) was an ancient Greece, Greek poet generally thought to have been active between 750 and 650 BC, around the same time as Homer.M. L. West, ''Hesiod: Theogony'', Oxford University Press (1966), p. 40.Jasper Gr ...
's ''Works and Days'', is another Greek variant of the type, with a thematic ''-e-'' instead of the ''-si-''. At least synchronically, φερεπτόλεμος discussed above is also of this type.
References
Indo-European linguistics
Linguistic morphology
Epithets of Helios
{{Ling-morph-stub