κόφινος

Ancient Greek

Etymology

Uncertain; Beekes and Furnee take the word as the usual Pre-Greek, while others have narrowed down the language of origin to possibly Semitic or Hurrian. Compare κόφος (kóphos, “basket-load”) and Arabic قُفَّة (quffa, “large wicker-basket”) and Arabic قَفِيز (qafīz, “a dry measure”) for potentially-related words relating to "containers" with guttural onset leading over an open vowel to a labial plosive or fricative. See Akkadian 𒄣𒌒𒁍 (/⁠quppu⁠/, “wicker basket”), as well as κοψία (kopsía, “earthen pot”), κόψα (kópsa, “water bucket, urn”).^[1]

Pronunciation

(5^th BCE Attic) IPA^(key): /kó.pʰi.nos/
(1^st CE Egyptian) IPA^(key): /ˈko.pʰi.nos/
(4^th CE Koine) IPA^(key): /ˈko.ɸi.nos/
(10^th CE Byzantine) IPA^(key): /ˈko.fi.nos/
(15^th CE Constantinopolitan) IPA^(key): /ˈko.fi.nos/

Noun

κόφῐνος • (kóphĭnos) m (genitive κοφῐ́νου); second declension

basket

Inflection

Second declension of ὁ κόφῐνος; τοῦ κοφῐ́νου (Attic)

Case / #	Singular	Dual	Plural
Nominative	ὁ κόφῐνος ho kóphĭnos	τὼ κοφῐ́νω tṑ kophĭ́nō	οἱ κόφῐνοι hoi kóphĭnoi
Genitive	τοῦ κοφῐ́νου toû kophĭ́nou	τοῖν κοφῐ́νοιν toîn kophĭ́noin	τῶν κοφῐ́νων tôn kophĭ́nōn
Dative	τῷ κοφῐ́νῳ tōî kophĭ́nōi	τοῖν κοφῐ́νοιν toîn kophĭ́noin	τοῖς κοφῐ́νοις toîs kophĭ́nois
Accusative	τὸν κόφῐνον tòn kóphĭnon	τὼ κοφῐ́νω tṑ kophĭ́nō	τοὺς κοφῐ́νους toùs kophĭ́nous
Vocative	κόφῐνε kóphĭne	κοφῐ́νω kophĭ́nō	κόφῐνοι kóphĭnoi
Notes:	This table gives Attic inflectional endings. For declension in other dialects, see Appendix:Ancient Greek dialectal declension.

Descendants

⇒ Greek: κοφίνι (kofíni)
→ Jewish Palestinian Aramaic: כפוני (“basket”)
→ Latin: cophinus, cofinus (see there for further descendants)
- → English: coffin

References

^ Beekes, Robert S. P. (2010) “κόφινος”, in Etymological Dictionary of Greek (Leiden Indo-European Etymological Dictionary Series; 10), with the assistance of Lucien van Beek, Leiden, Boston: Brill, →ISBN, page 765

“κόφινος”, in Liddell & Scott (1940) A Greek–English Lexicon, Oxford: Clarendon Press
“κόφινος”, in Liddell & Scott (1889) An Intermediate Greek–English Lexicon, New York: Harper & Brothers
κόφινος in Bailly, Anatole (1935) Le Grand Bailly: Dictionnaire grec-français, Paris: Hachette
G2894 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.
- basket idem, page 64.
κόφινος, in ΛΟΓΕΙΟΝ [Logeion] Dictionaries for Ancient Greek and Latin (in English, French, Spanish, German, Dutch and Chinese), University of Chicago, since 2011

[1] Beekes, Robert S. P. (2010) “κόφινος”, in Etymological Dictionary of Greek (Leiden Indo-European Etymological Dictionary Series; 10), with the assistance of Lucien van Beek, Leiden, Boston: Brill, →ISBN, page 765

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