Talk:ιός

Quote~request

@Saltmarsh, Sarri.greek Would it be possible to add a quote to the medical/biological sense for FWOTD? ←₰-→ Lingo ^Bingo _Dingo (talk) 11:13, 21 November 2020 (UTC)

@Lingo Bingo Dingo will do in the next few hours — Saltmarsh. 11:24, 21 November 2020 (UTC)

@Saltmarsh Thank you! ←₰-→ Lingo ^Bingo _Dingo (talk) 11:48, 21 November 2020 (UTC)

RFV discussion: January–March 2021

The following discussion has been moved from Wiktionary:Requests for verification (permalink).

This discussion is no longer live and is left here as an archive. Please do not modify this conversation, but feel free to discuss its conclusions.

---

ιός

Greek, RFV-sense of "venom". Removed out of process by an infrequent user. @Sarri.greek, Saltmarsh, is it true that this meaning is only used in Ancient Greek? ←₰-→ Lingo ^Bingo _Dingo (talk) 08:33, 17 January 2021 (UTC)

@Lingo Bingo Dingo, thank you for the question. Yes, it is true that the sense 'vemom' did not survive (except perhaps in some compounds). User:Poursa0 is an infrequent but trustworthy editor. We would like to see more of his edits. Happy New Year everyone! ‑‑Sarri.greek ^♫ | 08:46, 17 January 2021 (UTC)

Okay, but the definition shouldn't have been removed yet (though I wouldn't mind a sped-up removal after a week). The comment about Poursa0 being an infrequent user was to explain why xe probably did not know about the RFV process; it was not a request to have the sense removed out of process by an experienced user instead... ←₰-→ Lingo ^Bingo _Dingo (talk) 12:31, 17 January 2021 (UTC)

I am indeed inexperienced, I'll read more about this process although honestly I had never heard about it before. Poursa0 (talk) 13:24, 17 January 2021 (UTC)

@Lingo Bingo Dingo, Poursa0, Sarri.greek Our native Greek (retired and much missed) editor Flyax created the page with venom as one of the glosses. Babiniotis says that the "venom" meaning is rare (although my pocket dictionary Μανδαλά has it as the 1st definition!) — Saltmarsh. 07:19, 18 January 2021 (UTC)\

@Saltmarsh, Lingo Bingo Dingo, Sarri.greek I am a native Greek speaker as well, I have never seen ιός used to mean "venom", neither formally nor colloquially. I assume it may appear as such when someone quotes things from Ancient Greek, or when there is some sort of code-switching in really old texts that attempt to approach Ancient Greek. But that is not the reason for the confusion here. We have to acknowledge the bias that exists in various modern dictionaries, I don't find it odd that the meaning "venom" exists in a modern dictionary, despite the word not actually having that meaning in Modern Greek. This is really about what a word's "meaning" is. Since Ancient Greek is hugely prestigious in various Greek philological circles, this results in the etymology of words being considered the same as their "true meaning" without consideration of each word's actual use. This is a case of the etymological fallacy in action, since when it comes to words, as we know the signifier and the signified have an arbitrary relation between them as explained here and that relation is thus not predetermined by the ancient etymology of a word. Meaning that the meaning of ιός doesn't have to be venom because it used to a few thousand years ago.

Babiniotis(and a few others) in general has some weird lexicographic habits that favor such a bias as outlined in "Modern Greek spelling: History, theory, practice" by the Institute of Modern Greek Studies.

A quote cited in the previous book (p. 160) is (translated by me): "Kakridi-Ferrari(2008, 368) Ορθογραφικές μεταρρυθμίσεις: στάσεις και αντιστάσεις "There are certain comments in individual entries as well as in specialized tables about spelling issues. Some of these seem to be purposefully worded based on the dictations of the Atticist grammarians. The echo of the dictionary of Phrynichus reaches the eyes of the reader: "ακμήν αντί του έτι, Συ δε φυλάττου χρήσθαι, λέγε δε έτι!"" Poursa0 (talk) — This unsigned comment was added at 11:52, 18 January 2021 (UTC).

The way forward 'seems' very simple: include it with labels (archaic/obsolete/rare?) if there are more than three uses in post-1500 Greek and exclude it if there aren't. ←₰-→ Lingo ^Bingo _Dingo (talk) 17:45, 18 January 2021 (UTC)

It currently says it is inherited. So before the virus theory was proven the word necessarily was there in Modern Greek and meant venom, as nobody was sure whether microbes or miasmata or venoms or what cause illnesses. See also Wiktionary:Etymology scriptorium/2020/April § virus, directly from Latin? Fay Freak (talk) 01:05, 19 January 2021 (UTC)

@Fay Freak: The word is not inherited nor is that stated somewhere, it is a (λόγιο δάνειο)learned loanword(a semantic loan to be exact) into the modern standard language as quite obviously evidenced by its phonology and as can be seen by the marking [λογ.] in its etymology here. So no the word was not necessarily there(other words obviously were though), and that's exactly the reason why it doesn't mean "venom". If it had been inherited first of all the pronunciation would have been /'ʝɔs/, and the venom meaning would probably be quite well known today as well, not to mention that the word would have probably even gotten more meanings apart from the ones it "recently" loaned for scientific uses.Poursa0 (talk) 18:18, 19 January 2021 (UTC)

Poursa0: Fine. But it is stated by the use of the template {{inh}} in the Greek entry. Fay Freak (talk) 20:17, 19 January 2021 (UTC)

@Saltmarsh, Poursa0, Sarri.greek The word ιός can be found in these texts written in a very archaic style: [1] [2] [3] Logically, they cannot mean "virus" in the modern sense because those texts predate the classification of viruses as reproducing, living matter. If this is the only period in which there is attestation for the disputed sense, it is very outdated, so it should be labelled as archaic or obsolete. Besides, if this sense only occurs in biochemical contexts like this, it should probably be said that it is only used in this proto-virological way. ←₰-→ Lingo ^Bingo _Dingo (talk) 17:53, 12 February 2021 (UTC)

@Sarri.greek, Lingo Bingo Dingo — Sorry for the delay Lingo I just revisited here. I have asked Sarri on her talk - but ιός in Modern Greek certainly means virus - however my (perhaps bad) understanding is that Greek lay use of the terms μικρόβιο (mikróvio, “microbe”), βακτηρίδιο (vaktirídio, “bacterium”) and ιός (iós, “virus”) are muddled as they are in England by the wo/man-in-the-street. When ιός is found in old texts I would guess that virus=bacterium=microbe=germ etc etc. — Saltmarsh. 15:36, 11 March 2021 (UTC)