Τάρταρος

Ancient Greek

Alternative forms

Τάρτᾰρᾰ (Tártără)

Etymology

According to Strabo, this word had been fancifully believed to have been invented by Homer with the city of Ταρτησσός (Tartēssós) in mind, with a slight change of letters, it being west of the Ἡράκλειοι Στῆλαι (Hērákleioi Stêlai), or Pillars of Heracles, beyond which the sun sinks past Oceanus as it enters into Tartarus. A semantic connection of Definition 2 with the doomed, sunken civilization of Atlantis has not been overlooked.

Klein suggests (at least partly) otherwise: "prob[ably] word of imitative origin, suggestive of something frightful."

Pronunciation

(5^th BCE Attic) IPA^(key): /tár.ta.ros/
(1^st CE Egyptian) IPA^(key): /ˈtar.ta.ros/
(4^th CE Koine) IPA^(key): /ˈtar.ta.ros/
(10^th CE Byzantine) IPA^(key): /ˈtar.ta.ros/
(15^th CE Constantinopolitan) IPA^(key): /ˈtar.ta.ros/

Proper noun

Τάρτᾰρος • (Tártăros) m (genitive Ταρτᾰ́ρου); second declension

Tartarus
(Christendom) metaphor for Hell

Inflection

Second declension of ὁ Τάρτᾰρος; τοῦ Ταρτᾰ́ρου (Attic)

Case / #	Singular
Nominative	ὁ Τάρτᾰρος ho Tártăros
Genitive	τοῦ Ταρτᾰ́ρου toû Tartắrou
Dative	τῷ Ταρτᾰ́ρῳ tōî Tartắrōi
Accusative	τὸν Τάρτᾰρον tòn Tártăron
Vocative	Τάρτᾰρε Tártăre
Notes:	This table gives Attic inflectional endings. For declension in other dialects, see Appendix:Ancient Greek dialectal declension.

Derived terms

Ταρτᾰ́ρειος (Tartắreios)
ταρτᾰρῐ́ζω (tartărĭ́zō)
Ταρτᾰ́ρῐος (Tartắrĭos)
ταρτᾰρῑ́της (tartărī́tēs)
Ταρτᾰρόπαις (Tartărópais)
ταρτᾰροῦχος (tartăroûkhos)
ταρτᾰρόω (tartăróō)

Descendants

→ Asturian: Tártaru
→ Breton: Tartarus
→ Bulgarian: Тартар (Tartar)
→ Catalan: Tàrtar
→ Czech: Tartaros
→ Danish: Tartaros
→ Dutch: Tartarus
→ English: Tartarus
→ Finnish: Tartaros
→ French: Tartare
→ German: Tartaros
Greek: Τάρταρος (Tártaros)
→ Hebrew: טרטרוס
→ Italian: Tartaro
→ Japanese: タルタロス (Tarutarosu)
→ Latin: Tartarus
→ Lithuanian: Tartaras
→ Low German: Tartaros
→ Luxembourgish: Tartaros
→ Norwegian: Tartaros
→ Polish: Tartar
→ Portuguese: Tártaro
→ Romanian: Tartarus
→ Russian: Та́ртар (Tártar)
→ Serbo-Croatian: Tartar
→ Sicilian: Tàrtaru
→ Slovak: Tartaros
→ Slovene: Tartar
→ Spanish: Tártaro, Tártaros
→ Swedish: Tartaros
→ Thai: ทาร์ทารัส
→ Turkish: Tartarus
→ Vietnamese: Tartarus

References

“Τάρταρος”, in Liddell & Scott (1940) A Greek–English Lexicon, Oxford: Clarendon Press
“Τάρταρος”, in Liddell & Scott (1889) An Intermediate Greek–English Lexicon, New York: Harper & Brothers
“Τάρταρος”, in Autenrieth, Georg (1891) A Homeric Dictionary for Schools and Colleges, New York: Harper and Brothers
Τάρταρος in Bailly, Anatole (1935) Le Grand Bailly: Dictionnaire grec-français, Paris: Hachette
“Τάρταρος”, in Slater, William J. (1969) Lexicon to Pindar, Berlin: Walter de Gruyter
Woodhouse, S. C. (1910) English–Greek Dictionary: A Vocabulary of the Attic Language‎^[1], London: Routledge & Kegan Paul Limited, page 1,026