Daily Greek Vocabulary Challenge: Nov. 15

Here are today's vocabulary words; it's Group 105, and that's the last of the new proverbs for this week (I'll have a review post on Sunday). Click on the word to learn more at Logeion:

γονεύς ~ γονέως (noun m.): father, parent 

ἡγεμὼν ~ ἡγεμόνος (noun m.): leader, guide, chief 

τέλος ~ τέλους (noun n.): end, completion, goal 

δῶρον ~ δώρου (noun n.): gift 

χρόνος ~ χρόνου (noun m.): time 

These are the proverbs (and there are always more proverbs at the blog):

Γονεῖς αἰδοῦ.

Νοῦν ἡγεμόνα ποιοῦ.

Ζεὺς πάντων ἐφορᾷ τέλος.

Κακὸν δῶρον, ἴσον ζημίᾳ.

Στιγμὴ χρόνου πᾶς ἐστιν ὁ βίος.

And now, some commentary:

Γονεῖς αἰδοῦ.

Respect your parents.

This is one of the maxims of the Seven Sages as recorded by Stobaeus: Delphic Maxims. About the middle imperative αἰδοῦ, see yesterday's post: Σεαυτὸν αἰδοῦ. The noun γονεύς is derived from the root of the verb γίγνομαι, which is the middle form means "be born" (compare Latin "gigno").

Νοῦν ἡγεμόνα ποιοῦ.

Make your mind your leader.

These words are attributed to Solon by Diogenes Laertius; you can read more about Solon at Wikipedia.

The verb ποιοῦ here is also a middle imperative, and from the Greek ἡγεμὼν, we get English hegemony. This always reminds me of the opening lines of the Buddha's Dhammapada: "Mind precedes thoughts, mind is their chief, their quality is made by mind..."

Ζεὺς πάντων ἐφορᾷ τέλος.

Zeus looks upon the end of all things.

This is another of the sayings attributed to Solon. The verb ἐφορᾷ is a compound of ἐπι and ὁρᾷ: the iota drops before the following vowel, and then the pi aspirates, resulting in the compound ἐφορᾷ. For more about the etymology of Zeus's name, which has Διός as its genitive form, see Wikipedia. The word τέλος has enormous range of meaning as you can see in the LSJ dictionary entry; the English word "end" has a similar range of meaning. From this Greek word we get English teleology.

Κακὸν δῶρον ἴσον ζημίᾳ.

A bad gift is the same as a loss.

You can see the Greek δῶρον in the name Theodore. From the root of the adjective ἴσο- we get the iso- words in English like isometer and isosceles (Greek ἰσο-σκελής, equal-legged).

Στιγμὴ χρόνου πᾶς ἐστιν ὁ βίος.

A whole life is (just) a moment of time.

The words comes from Plutarch's essay on education (although it should be noted that Plutarch puts these words into the mouths of flatterers urging the hedonism of the here-and-now as opposed to delayed gratification). The word στίγμα in Greek is literally a prick, a point, a mark, and thus it also comes to mean tattoo in Greek (compare the use of stigma in English). So, the idea here is a prick of time, a single point of time, a moment. From Greek χρόνος we get all the chron- words in English like chronicle and chronology.

Zeus

And here's a random proverb too:

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