ποτός

From Proto-Indo-European *ph₃tós (“(having been) drunk”). Cognate with Latin pōtus and Sanskrit पी॒त (pītá).

ποτός • (potós) m (feminine ποτή, neuter ποτόν); first/second declension

1. drinkable; fit or suitable for drinking
   • 460 BCE – 395 BCE, Thucydides, 6 100:

     ὕδωρ ποτόν

     húdōr potón

     drinkable water

   • 428 BCE, Euripides, Hippolytus 516:

     φάρμακον ποτόν

     phármakon potón

     a medicine fit to be drunk

2. (of liquids) intended for drinking, as opposed to other uses

As a deverbal adjective from πίνω (pínō), ποτός has a passive–resultative sense (“that which is drunk / to be drunk”), and refers to suitability for drinking rather than the state of intoxication. For “drunk, intoxicated”, Greek uses terms such as μεθύων (methúōn) or μέθυσος (méthusos).

ποτός • (potós) n (genitive ποτοῦ); second declension

1. a drink, beverage (especially wine)
   • c. 800 BCE – 600 BCE, Homer, Iliad 1.470:

     κρητῆρας ἐπεστέψαντο ποτοῖο

     krētêras epestépsanto potoîo

     they crowned the mixing bowls with drink

   • c. 800 BCE – 600 BCE, Homer, Odyssey 2.341:

     θεῖον ποτὸν ἐντὸς ἔχοντες

     theîon potòn entòs ékhontes

     having a divine drink within

2. drinking water
   • 458 BCE, Aeschylus, Agamemnon 1157:

     ἰὼ Σκαμάνδρου πάτριον ποτόν

     iṑ Skamándrou pátrion potón

     the ancestral drinking water of Scamander

The neuter ποτόν is a substantivized use of the adjective, referring to that which is drunk. It commonly denotes wine, but may also refer to water or drink in general, and appears in fixed expressions such as “food and drink”.

This adjective does not mean “drunk” in the sense of “inebriated, intoxicated”, for which there are various terms, including μεθύων (methúōn), κάτοινος (kátoinos), μέθυσος (méthusos) etc.

• πίνω (pínō)
• πότιμος (pótimos)
• πότος (pótos)

• “ποτός”, in Autenrieth, Georg (1891), A Homeric Dictionary for Schools and Colleges, New York: Harper and Brothers
• ποτός in Bailly, Anatole (1935), Le Grand Bailly: Dictionnaire grec-français, Paris: Hachette
• ποτός, in ΛΟΓΕΙΟΝ [Logeion] Dictionaries for Ancient Greek and Latin (in English, French, Spanish, German, Dutch and Chinese), University of Chicago, since 2011
• “ποτός”, in Liddell & Scott (1940), A Greek–English Lexicon, Oxford: Clarendon Press
• ποτός in Pape, Wilhelm (1914), Max Sengebusch, editor, Handwörterbuch der griechischen Sprache‎^[1] (in German), 3rd edition, Braunschweig: Friedrich Vieweg und Sohn
• Woodhouse, S. C. (1910), English–Greek Dictionary: A Vocabulary of the Attic Language‎^[2], London: Routledge & Kegan Paul Limited.
  • drinkable idem, page 253.
  • fresh idem, page 344.
  • potable idem, page 629.
  • potation idem, page 629.
  • sweet idem, page 848.