φοῖβος

Unexplained.

• Some^[1] have connected the glosses ἀφικτόν (aphiktón, “repugnant, detestable”) and ἀφικτρός (aphiktrós, “stained, defiled”) from the work of Hesychius of Alexandria, giving the positive word with the well-established notion of “pure”.
• According to Albert Joris Van Windekens^[2] from Pelasgian and to be connected with ποιμήν (poimḗn), according to others with Latin pūrus und pius.^[3]
• According to Schmid^[4] metrical transformation of Φόβος (Phóbos). Beekes excludes this. Then the adjective would result as a separate word or as a poetical interpretation of the God's epithet Φοῖβος (Phoîbos).
• Perhaps from Proto-Indo-European *bʰoygʷ-o-, from *bʰeygʷ- (“to shine, clear”). According to Beekes the word has been connected to the Thessalian town Βοίβη (Boíbē) or Φοίβη (Phoíbē), as listed by Stephanus of Byzantium.

φοῖβος • (phoîbos) m (feminine φοίβη, neuter φοῖβον); first/second declension

1. pure, bright, radiant

• “φοῖβος”, in Liddell & Scott (1940) A Greek–English Lexicon, Oxford: Clarendon Press
• “φοῖβος”, in Liddell & Scott (1889) An Intermediate Greek–English Lexicon, New York: Harper & Brothers
• φοῖβος in Bailly, Anatole (1935) Le Grand Bailly: Dictionnaire grec-français, Paris: Hachette
• 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, →ISBN