οὐ
Contents
Ancient GreekEdit
Alternative formsEdit
- οὐκ (ouk) – before vowel with smooth breathing
- οὐχ (oukh) – before vowel with rough breathing
- οὔ (oú) – pausal form
- οὐχί (oukhí) – Epic, Attic
- οὐκί (oukí) – Epic, Ionic
EtymologyEdit
Possibly οὐκί (oukí, “not so, never”), from *ojukid, from Proto-Indo-European *(ne) h₂óyu kʷid (“not ever, not on your life”). Compare Sanskrit उद् (ud), Gothic 𐌿𐌳 (ud), Old Armenian ոչ (očʿ).
PronunciationEdit
ParticleEdit
οὐ • (ou) (negative particle)
- not (indicates negation)
Usage notesEdit
οὐ is the indicative negator (i.e. of facts, statements), where μή (mḗ) is the subjunctive negator (i.e. of will, thought). It usually immediately precedes the word (most often a verb) which it negates. Negative concord (also known as double negatives) is frequent in Ancient Greek.
ReferencesEdit
- οὐ in Liddell & Scott (1940) A Greek–English Lexicon, Oxford: Clarendon Press
- οὐ in Liddell & Scott (1889) An Intermediate Greek–English Lexicon, New York: Harper & Brothers
- οὐ in Autenrieth, Georg (1891) A Homeric Dictionary for Schools and Colleges, New York: Harper and Brothers
- οὐ 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
- οὐ in Cunliffe, Richard J. (1924) A Lexicon of the Homeric Dialect: Expanded Edition, Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, published 1963
- οὐ in Slater, William J. (1969) Lexicon to Pindar, Berlin: Walter de Gruyter
- G3756 in Strong’s Exhaustive Concordance to the Bible, 1979
- Woodhouse, S. C. (1910) English–Greek Dictionary: A Vocabulary of the Attic Language[1], London: Routledge & Kegan Paul Limited.
- Beekes, Robert S. P. (2010) Etymological Dictionary of Greek (Leiden Indo-European Etymological Dictionary Series; 10), with the assistance of Lucien van Beek, Leiden, Boston: Brill