βυθός

Ancient Greek

Alternative forms

• βυσσός (bussós)

Etymology

Traditionally considered a metathesis from Proto-Indo-European *dʰewb- (“hazy, deep”), with cognates including Old Church Slavonic дъно (dŭno), Old English dēop (English deep) and Albanian det (from Proto-Albanian *deubeta). (Can this⁽⁺⁾ etymology be sourced?) Unrelated to βᾰθῠ́ς (bathús, “deep, thick, profound”) and βένθος (bénthos, “sea depth”), despite similar semantics and superficially similar phonetics.

Alternately, cognate to Sanskrit गाध (gādha, “bottom, ford, shallows, standing-ground in water”).

Also compare the root Proto-Indo-European *bʰew- with meaning related to swelling, as in a deepening.

However, Beekes rejects Indo-European origin, based on phonetic difficulties with theories like the above, as well as θ/σσ variation displayed by the word's variant βυσσός (bussós) which is bolstered by the latter's substrate-like formation βυσσαλ- (bussal-), and assigns it to Pre-Greek instead.

Pronunciation

 

• IPA^(key): /by.tʰós/ → /βyˈθos/ → /viˈθos/

• (5^th BCE Attic) IPA^(key): /by.tʰós/
• (1^st CE Egyptian) IPA^(key): /byˈtʰos/
• (4^th CE Koine) IPA^(key): /βyˈθos/
• (10^th CE Byzantine) IPA^(key): /vyˈθos/
• (15^th CE Constantinopolitan) IPA^(key): /viˈθos/

Noun

βῠθός • (buthós) m (genitive βῠθοῦ); second declension

1. depth
2. depth of the sea, deep water

Inflection

Second declension of ὁ βῠθός; τοῦ βῠθοῦ (Attic)

Case / #	Singular	Dual	Plural
Nominative	ὁ βῠθός ho buthós	τὼ βῠθώ tṑ buthṓ	οἱ βῠθοί hoi buthoí
Genitive	τοῦ βῠθοῦ toû buthoû	τοῖν βῠθοῖν toîn buthoîn	τῶν βῠθῶν tôn buthôn
Dative	τῷ βῠθῷ tôi buthôi	τοῖν βῠθοῖν toîn buthoîn	τοῖς βῠθοῖς toîs buthoîs
Accusative	τὸν βῠθόν tòn buthón	τὼ βῠθώ tṑ buthṓ	τοὺς βῠθούς toùs buthoús
Vocative	βῠθέ buthé	βῠθώ buthṓ	βῠθοί buthoí
Notes:	This table gives Attic inflectional endings. For declension in other dialects, see Appendix:Ancient Greek dialectal declension.

Derived terms

• ἄβυσσος (ábussos)

Descendants

• Greek: βυθός (vythós)

Further reading

• “βυθός”, in Liddell & Scott (1940) A Greek–English Lexicon, Oxford: Clarendon Press
• “βυθός”, in Liddell & Scott (1889) An Intermediate Greek–English Lexicon, New York: Harper & Brothers
• βυθός in Bailly, Anatole (1935) Le Grand Bailly: Dictionnaire grec-français, Paris: Hachette
• Bauer, Walter et al. (2001) A Greek–English Lexicon of the New Testament and Other Early Christian Literature, Third edition, Chicago: University of Chicago Press
• βυθός in the Diccionario Griego–Español en línea (2006–2024)
• “βυθός”, in Slater, William J. (1969) Lexicon to Pindar, Berlin: Walter de Gruyter
• G1037 in Strong, James (1979) Strong’s Exhaustive Concordance to the Bible
• Woodhouse, S. C. (1910) English–Greek Dictionary: A Vocabulary of the Attic Language‎^[1], London: Routledge & Kegan Paul Limited.
  • abyss idem, page 5.
  • gulf idem, page 379.
  • yawning idem, page 995.

Greek

Etymology

Inherited from Ancient Greek βυθός (buthós).

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /viˈθos/

Noun

βυθός • (vythós) m (plural βυθοί)

1. seabed, riverbed, bottom, ground

Declension

Declension of βυθός

	singular	plural
nominative	βυθός •	βυθοί •
genitive	βυθού •	βυθών •
accusative	βυθό •	βυθούς •
vocative	βυθέ •	βυθοί •

Further reading

• βυθός, in Λεξικό της κοινής νεοελληνικής [Dictionary of Standard Modern Greek], Triantafyllidis Foundation, 1998 at the Centre for the Greek language