The Greek Diminutive Suffix -io'ao- -lOxi]-. 173 



which designate an object as being ' like but not the same as the 

 primitive ' because the latter included in its meaning the idea of 

 a certain size, and to anything that fell below this normal it could 

 not properl)^ be applied. Thus uuXoq, like our ' flute,' was used 

 only of the larger kinds of wind instruments of that type, while 

 a smaller one of the same kind was (/.'jHctkoc, ' not a real flute but 

 merely hke it,' with which we may compare our use of ' piccolo,' 

 an entirely different stem. Similarly vyXtniO^ ' a shrine ' was ' some- 

 thing like a temple, but not a real one,' but might be thought of 

 as ' little temple.' xscrTpivicrxo? was evidently ' not a real xso-TpTvo? 

 (a kind of fish),' because it was the smaller species (§ 62 Aa). 

 TiTspioxov, applied to feathers of a very 3'oung bird, may have been 

 thought of as ' not a real feather yet,' since they are soft and 

 down-like. In all such cases a shift of attitude as to what was 

 the proper application of the primitive, particularly in the trans- 

 mission from speaker to hearer, caused the diminutive interpreta- 

 tion to become complete. If to a hearer ccuXoc, should designate 

 such an instrument of any size, he could not interpret a5>.iaxo? 

 otherwise than ' a little flute.' Perhaps also certain words designat- 

 ing the young of animals ^ could have been felt the same way, 

 e. g. BsXcpivtcT/io; ' a little or young dolphin ' was ' not a real dol- 

 phin yet,' because too small to be called bj^ that name if we think of 

 it as applying to an animal of normal size. Cf. also oivt(7xo? ' young 

 wine,' ' scarcely wine as yet,' because not sufficiently fermented. 

 In these two words the diminutive idea was rather ' young ' than 

 ' small,' in omcr/ioq exclusively so. 



57. As long as there was any trace of the original notion of 

 similarity a diminutive could refer to an object only as being 

 smaller than the normal of its class, since the notion that the 

 primitive was really not applicable involved the isolation of the 

 derivative, as it were, from the great mass of objects to which the 

 primitive could refer, e. g. •^nrspiG^ov, applied to the first downy 

 feathers of a young bird, by the notion ' too small to be really 

 called a feather ' implied that the normal feather was larger than 

 the one designated by Tc-epioxov. Just as soon, however, as this 

 original notion had faded, when e. g. auT^icntOi; was merely ' a little 

 flute,' and not something ' like a flute,' the diminutive ending 

 might as well be applied when the primitive was conceived as 

 designating a small class, and the individual or individuals referred 

 to were thought of as small or young merely by comparison with 



1 Cf. Brugmann, Gr. 2. i^. 504. 



