Skip to content

Atlantic word of the moment.

ganÉ›. (É¡É‘Ì€.nÉ™) adj.

  1. Deadly, poisonous, dangerous, noxious, baneful.

[Âdlantki *gani. Kirumb *ganos, Proto-Indo-European *gÊ·hn- ‘to slay’.]

I don’t know how late this formation was, but Pokorny doesn’t show any cognates  that would have been built from the pattern *gÊ·hn-no- as this would be.  Most of the derivatives of this root refer to the act of slaying or the thing being slain, but in Kirumb *-no- became a productive suffix to create nouns and adjectives referring to the doer of an action.  GanÉ› is thus literally ‘that which kills’, though it may also be used for things that are only gravely damaging as well.

This word was the last I needed to translate the first phrase of the Iliad:

Æ©uyirÉ”
sing.IMPERAT
Ê’evÉ›,
goddess
emne
anger
ganÉ›
deadly
adÉ™
ACC
Axille’f
Achilles.GEN
Pele’f
Peleus.GEN
sing, O Goddess, the deadly wrath of Achilles son of Peleus

Post a Comment

Your email is never published nor shared. Required fields are marked *