μαλλός

See also: Μαλλός

Ancient Greek

Etymology

Of uncertain origin.

The connection with Lithuanian mìlas (“coarse wool”) has been abandoned. Greppin suggests that Armenian մալ (mal, “cattle”) is cognate with the Greek word. The Greek word only denotes the "flock of wool" and never the animal, but this may be a later semantic development. An Indo-European form *mh₂l- is rather improbable, however. The word may well be of substrate origin, with Beekes suggesting a borrowing from Pre-Greek, and Clackson suggesting a borrowing from Arabic, the latter which is also the prevailing theory for the Armenian cognate.^[1]

Pronunciation

(5^th BCE Attic) IPA^(key): /mal.lós/
(1^st CE Egyptian) IPA^(key): /malˈlos/
(4^th CE Koine) IPA^(key): /malˈlos/
(10^th CE Byzantine) IPA^(key): /malˈlos/
(15^th CE Constantinopolitan) IPA^(key): /maˈlos/

Noun

μαλλός • (mallós) m (genitive μαλλοῦ); second declension

flock of wool
tress, braid of hair

Inflection

Second declension of ὁ μαλλός; τοῦ μαλλοῦ (Attic)

Case / #	Singular	Dual	Plural
Nominative	ὁ μαλλός ho mallós	τὼ μαλλώ tṑ mallṓ	οἱ μαλλοί hoi malloí
Genitive	τοῦ μαλλοῦ toû malloû	τοῖν μαλλοῖν toîn malloîn	τῶν μαλλῶν tôn mallôn
Dative	τῷ μαλλῷ tôi mallôi	τοῖν μαλλοῖν toîn malloîn	τοῖς μαλλοῖς toîs malloîs
Accusative	τὸν μαλλόν tòn mallón	τὼ μαλλώ tṑ mallṓ	τοὺς μαλλούς toùs malloús
Vocative	μαλλέ mallé	μαλλώ mallṓ	μαλλοί malloí
Notes:	This table gives Attic inflectional endings. For declension in other dialects, see Appendix:Ancient Greek dialectal declension.

Derived terms

δασύμαλλος (dasúmallos)
μαλλόδετος (mallódetos)
μαλλοειδής (malloeidḗs)
μάλλυκες (mállukes)
μάλλωσις (mállōsis)
μαλλωτάριον (mallōtárion)
μαλλωτός (mallōtós)
πηγεσίμαλλος (pēgesímallos)

References

^ Beekes, Robert S. P. (2010) “μαλλός”, in Etymological Dictionary of Greek (Leiden Indo-European Etymological Dictionary Series; 10), with the assistance of Lucien van Beek, Leiden, Boston: Brill, →ISBN, page 899