The root of all gluttony

Abstract

Abstract The etymological analysis of Attic Greek τένθης ‘gourmand, glutton’ (Ar.+) has focused since Antiquity on comparison with the obscure Hesiodic hapax τένδει (Op. 524). Rejecting this unpromising solution, in this paper I go back to a forgotten proposal by Solmsen (1897), who compared τένθης with the PN Πενθεύς ~ Τενθεύς and Lat. condiō ‘to season (food)’, reconstructing a root *kʷendʰ-/*kʷondʰ-. While Solmsen did not pursue further analysis of this root, I propose that it arose - possibly already at the PIE stage - from *kʷem- ‘gulp, swallow’ with addition of the “detransitivizing” suffix *-dʰ-e/o-. The present stem *kʷem-dʰe/o- would have had the intransitive meaning ‘to swallow food’ with Indefinite Object Deletion, as is typologically common in “ingestive” verbs. In addition to the agent noun τένθης, I suggest that πάθνη ~ φάτνη ‘crib, manger’ was another nominal derivative of the ‘neo-root’ *kʷendʰ-/*kʷondʰ-/*kʷn̥dʰ-. I conclude by discussing other possible etymologies of Lat. condiō.