πύργος

First attested in Homer, Iliad 7.219. There are multiple theories:

1. A loanword, perhaps from Urartian 𒁓𒂵𒈾 (bur-ga-na /⁠burgana⁠/, “pillar; column; altar; base; built-up foundation”), however this may itself be a loan with no known Hurrian cognate; compare also Old Armenian բուրգն (burgn, “pyramid”).
2. Connected to Proto-Indo-European *bʰerǵʰ- (“high”), with cognates including Sanskrit बृ॒हत् (bṛhát, “lofty; high; tall”), Old Armenian բարձր (barjr, “high”) and Old English burg (English borough).
3. Kretschmer suggested a borrowing from Proto-Germanic *burgz (“fortified town; hill-fort”) mediated through some Northern Balkans language (Ancient Macedonian?).
4. Beekes points to Pre-Greek, on the basis of the resemblance to Pre-Greek placenames such as Πέργαμον (Pérgamon), particularly noting that the variant Φῠ́ρκος (Phŭ́rkos) for Πῠ́ργος (Pŭ́rgos) is seemingly reflected in the Hesychian term φῠ́ρκος (phŭ́rkos, “wall”).

πῠ́ργος • (pŭ́rgos) m (genitive πῠ́ργου); second declension

1. tower; watchtower
2. (in the plural) towered wall
3. the part of the house where women live
4. castle; fortress; bulwark
5. (military) division; column

• Greek: πύργος (pýrgos)
• →? Albanian: burg
• →? Late Latin: burgus (see there for further descendants)
• → Translingual: Pyrgus
• → Turkish: burgaz

• “πύργος”, in Liddell & Scott (1940), A Greek–English Lexicon, Oxford: Clarendon Press
• “πύργος”, in Liddell & Scott (1889), An Intermediate Greek–English Lexicon, New York: Harper & Brothers
• “πύργος”, in Autenrieth, Georg (1891), A Homeric Dictionary for Schools and Colleges, New York: Harper and Brothers
• πύργος in Bailly, Anatole (1935), Le Grand Bailly: Dictionnaire grec-français, Paris: Hachette
• Bauer, Walter et al. (2001), A Greek–English Lexicon of the New Testament and Other Early Christian Literature, Third edition, Chicago: University of Chicago Press
• πύργος in Cunliffe, Richard J. (1924), A Lexicon of the Homeric Dialect: Expanded Edition, Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, published 1963
• “πύργος”, in Slater, William J. (1969), Lexicon to Pindar, Berlin: Walter de Gruyter
• G4444 in Strong, James (1979), Strong’s Exhaustive Concordance to the Bible
• Woodhouse, S. C. (1910), English–Greek Dictionary: A Vocabulary of the Attic Language‎^[1], London: Routledge & Kegan Paul Limited.
  • belfry idem, page 72.
  • bulwark idem, page 103.
  • defence idem, page 204.
  • harbour idem, page 385.
  • keep idem, page 467.
  • pinnacle idem, page 614.
  • protection idem, page 653.
  • refuge idem, page 685.
  • tower idem, page 884.
  • turret idem, page 902.
• Beekes, Robert S. P. (2010), Etymological Dictionary of Greek (Leiden Indo-European Etymological Dictionary Series; 10), with the assistance of Lucien van Beek, Leiden, Boston: Brill, →ISBN, page 1262
• πύργος, in ΛΟΓΕΙΟΝ [Logeion] Dictionaries for Ancient Greek and Latin (in English, French, Spanish, German, Dutch and Chinese), University of Chicago, since 2011

From Ancient Greek πύργος (púrgos).

• IPA^(key): /ˈpiɾ.ɣos/

• Audio:

  (file)

• Hyphenation: πύρ‧γος

πύργος • (pýrgos) m (plural πύργοι)

1. tower

   κεντρικός πύργος ― kentrikós pýrgos ― central tower, castle keep

2. (chess) rook

• ακροπύργιο n (akropýrgio, “castle keep”)

• πύργος on the Greek Wikipedia.Wikipedia ^el