>One does have to deal with the fact that οπλιτης/hoplite is pretty
> Do you have any evidence that hoplite isn’t a loan word into Greek, that by
> the fifth century had been in the language so long that its foreign roots
> were forgotten? Just like “pork” and “beef” have been in English so long
> that we don’t consider them as loan words brought into English by foreign
> invaders?
clearly derived from οπλον/hoplon, which seems originally to have been
a fairly fluid term for a variety of tools before its later becoming
specialized in the sense of a type of shield, and then armour in
general. That means that even if _hoplon_ were a loan into Greek,
_hoplites_ would not be, and one has to allow for the development of
meaning in the primary word and the subsequent creation of the derived
word before the latter was imported into Hebrew. (_Hoplon_ itself may
be a loanword into Greek for all I know - at least I'm not aware of an
IE etymology.)
For curiosity, what's the other word?
> I don’t deny that it possibly was originally Greek, or it could have been
> another Indo-European language, all I say is that it appears to be a loan
> word into Hebrew to refer to an elite fighting force, possibly came into
> Hebrew through the Philistines. Further, almost an identically formed word
> appears in another ANE language to refer to an elite soldier. It’s possible
> that that’s just a coincidence. Or it could be an example of linguistic
> borrowing. Too little evidence remains to answer these questions.
--
Will Parsons
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