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Any nouns that end in ω?
by TImon Rossolimos - Tuesday, 27 September 2016, 07:38 AM
  Can you think of any nouns that end in ω?

I can only think of costume μαγιώ.
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Re: Any nouns that end in ω?
by Greg Brush - Friday, 14 April 2023, 05:14 PM
  1) The correct spelling is μαγιό (one-piece swimsuit for women), an indeclinable foreign import from French "maillot". In contemporary transliteration, an /o/ sound in foreign imports is spelled with ο (omicron).

2) As to nouns ending in -ω,
other than a number of ancient mythological or literary female names, where the genitive ending has been demoticized to -ς, for example:
η/την Ηρώ (Hero), της Ηρώς*,
similarly, Ερατώ (Erato), Ερατώς*; Καλυψώ (Calypso), Καλυψώς*; Σαπφώ (Sappho), Σαπφώς*; Πειθώ (Peitho), Πειθώς*; Ιώ (Io), Ιώς*
and some contemporary female nicknames ending in -ω, for example:
η/την Βάσω (< Βασιλική), της Βάσως,
similarly, Φρόσω (< Ευφροσύνη), Φρόσως; Θεανώ, θεανώς; Μυρτώ, Μυρτώς*; Αργυρώ, Αργυρώς,
there are only one or two survivors from the ancient language. These nouns had a stem ending in οι:
η/την ηχώ (echo), της ηχώς*.
* Most of these nouns ending in -ω also have a formal (katharevousa) contracted genitive ending in -ους: της Ηρούς, Ερατούς, Καλυψούς, Σαπφούς, Πειθούς, Ιούς, Μυρτούς, ηχούς, etc.

Other than ηχώ and a handful of female names, I can't think of any others, certainly not any of native Greek origin.

Regards,
Greg Brush

[originally posted Wednesday, 28 September 2016, 06:15 AM]
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Re: Any nouns that end in ω?
by TImon Rossolimos - Thursday, 29 September 2016, 02:44 PM
  Thank you as always Greg.
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Re: Any nouns that end in ω?
by Gum Booocho - Friday, 14 April 2023, 04:41 PM
  North & Hilliard Greek Composition textbook in an appendix on accents, says that there is a class of Greek nouns ending in ω & that they are oxytone. One example is feminine πειθώ
NGNAV πειθώ, πειθοῦς, πειθοί, πειθώ, πειθᾶ. No plurals.
Stem is πειθο-. This is a 3rd declension o stem.
There are no plural forms per Smyth. It means persuasion. It evidences vowel contractions of o+ω, o+o, o+ι,& ο+α. I don't know an explanation for the Vocative in long alpha. The vocative is probably an address to the goddess of this name. I don't know any other examples, but per N & H there must be some. So you can still nurse a heroic hypothesis if you think the word got that way by being a goddess, though goddesses are not heroes. One might consult a reverse list of Greek words (spelled backwards).

In taking more look at this site, I guess it is devoted to modern Greek (IMHO a different language from classical Greek, as Italian is from Latin). So I suppose my comments are off topic. But on classical Greek:
while postulating an o stem looked reasonable to me, I see that greater scholars than I (not hard to find) have deemed these quite a number (all feminine) nouns to be oι stems. And I came across an internet Brill research which really gets into the numerous oxytone nouns, used even for male & female sexual parts! Apparently they have no plural but if plural borrow from a different (not 3rd) declension, like 2nd declension for plural. This article has a nice categorization of their semantics, from hypocoristic to pejorative. Don't call a woman δαλλώ. I suppose that modern Greeks can look at this article & see how much of the ancient Greek omega oxytone feminine nouns have some counterpart in modern Greek.
https://brill.com/view/journals/jgl/19/2/article-p168_3.xml?Xlanguage=en
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Re: Any nouns that end in ω?
by Greg Brush - Friday, 14 April 2023, 05:02 PM
  Right, η πειθώ (persuasion), with modern genitive πειθώς / learned genitive πειθούς, is an example of such a noun τhat survives into the contemporary language.

And yes, this site is dedicated to Modern Greek, a language as sufficiently different from its ancient ancestor as Modern Italian is from Classical Latin.

Regards,
Greg Brush