Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2022 December 24

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December 24

Singular Teutons

What are the singular forms of Latin Teutonēs or Ancient Greek Τεύτονες? All the online sources that I can find only attest the plurals. Lazar Taxon (talk) 06:53, 24 December 2022 (UTC)

In Latin, Teutones had a related alternative Teutoni, with the rare (poetic) singular Teutonus, suggesting that the singular of Teutones might have been an unattested *Teutonis. Liddell & Scott have no entry for Τεύτονες or any possible singular form, so the word itself seems not to be attested in Classical Greek. Deor (talk) 15:57, 24 December 2022 (UTC)

Bailly has an entry Τεύτονες.^[1] Given the variety of third-declension nouns with plurals ending on -ες (ἀγών → ἀγῶνες; ἅλς → ἅλες; ἑρμίς → ἑρμῖνες; ἡγεμών → ἡγεμόνες) a putative singular could have taken any of quite a few forms (*Τεῦτον; *Τεῦτονς; *Τεῦτος; *Τεύτων).  --Lambiam 19:25, 24 December 2022 (UTC)

All the sources I've seen say that Τεύτονες is an adoption (into Koine) of Latin Teutones, so any putative Greek singular would, of course, be a back-formation; and which, if any, of your suggested forms Greek speakers would have chosen is anybody's guess (though Τεῦτον and Τεύτων both look likely to me). Deor (talk) 21:04, 24 December 2022 (UTC)

Lambiam -- Greek words end in nun-sigma only in a few rare cases when the stem ends in n + consonant (Tiryns, Tirynthos), but not when the stem ends in only -n (see note at https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Τίρυνς ), so **Τεῦτονς is not a possibility... AnonMoos (talk) 23:36, 26 December 2022 (UTC)

Wiktionary has an entry wikt:Τεύτων#Ancient_Greek, but the cited source only seems to give the plural, so this may be WP:OR. --Amble (talk) 04:37, 27 December 2022 (UTC)