How I write greek-greek definitions
There's an excellent Latin<>Latin dictionary available online, Forcellini. But there isn't a good Ancient Greek one.
There is Emiliano Caruso's Monolingual Dictionary of Ancient Greek, which is hard to get, and expensive, but good from all I hear. But also entirely physical.
So, there's a gap here, isn't there. It would be useful, incredibly useful, to be able to provide Greek definitions of Greek terms, especially for learners wanting to use more L2 and less L1.
I've done some work on this piecemeal before, but now I'm tackling it a bit more systematically, to fit in with both data work with James Tauber, but also teaching with Athenaze. So I'm working through the Italian Athenaze, trying to generate slides for vocabulary items, that include (a) pictures, (b) a Latin gloss, (c) English gloss, and (d) Greek definition.
But how does one write a Greek definition?
Here's some of my tricks:
(1) Getting a good sense of the word, using GE (Brill Dictionary of Ancient Greek), LSJ.
(2) Looking at a number of comparable English terms in the Cambridge Learner's Dictionary. And seeing how they compose simple definitions.
(3) Making use of Latin>English and English>Greek lexica to get a sense of other Greek words I'll need to write a definition.
(4) Checking on the usage of those other Greek words, to make sure I'm not misusing those in the definition.
(5) Writing the definition.
Here's a very brief sample of the kind of stuff I'm working on, just on the definition side of thing:
| βίος | ὄνομα | τὸ ὑπάρχειν ζῶντος, ἢ ἀνθρώπου ἢ ζῴου |
| οἶκος | ὄνομα | τόπος ἢ οἴκημα ἐν ᾧ ὅστις οἰκεῖ ἢ βιῶ |
| ἥλιος | ὄνομα | ὁ ἀστὴρ ὃς τὴν γῆν φωτίζει τε καὶ θερμαίνει |
| σῖτος | ὄνομα | σπέρμα τι ἐκ οὗ ἄνθρωποι ἄλευρα, ἔπειτα ἄρτον, ποιοῦσιν |
| γεωργός | ὄνομα | ἄνθρωπος ὃς τὴν γῆν γεωργεῖ ἢ κλῆρον ἔχει ἐν ᾧ ἐργάζεται |
| κλῆρος | ὄνομα | (1) ὃ κατὰ τύχην νέμεται. (2) μέρος χώρᾱς κατὰ κλῆρον νέμεται |
| ἀγρός | ὄνομα | μέρος τῆς χώρᾱς ἐν ᾧ ἄνθρωπος σῖτον ποιεῖ ἢ ζῷα φύλαττει |
| αὐτουργός | ὄνομα | ἄνθρωπος ὃς αὐτὸς κλῆρον ἑαυτοῦ γεωργεῖ |
| λίθος | ὄνομα | ὕλη ἢ σύστασις σκληρά, ἣ ἐν τῇ γῇ κεῖται |
| μόσχος | ὄνομα | βοῦς νεός |
| πόνος | ὄνομα | τὸ ἐργάζεσθαι, χαλεπῶς καὶ πολὺν χρόνον |