Greek Word of the Week 001 ἰέναι ὥρᾱ μοί ἐστιν “it’s time for me to go” (Patreon)

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Greek WotW 001

ἰέναι ὥρᾱ μοί ἐστιν “it’s time for me to go”

Χαῖρε! Welcome my dear Patron to the Greek Word of the Week, a new series like the Latin Word of the Week Patreon series, in which I tell you about interesting words, expressions, and figures of speech in the Ancient Greek language.

This week our phrase is ἰέναι ὥρᾱ μοί ἐστιν “it’s time for me to go,” something we can use when excusing ourselves from a conversation. I just love how the Greek word ὥρᾱ is almost identical to the Latin cognate hōra. Like Latin, Ancient Greek ὥρᾱ can mean more than just “hour,” but also longer periods of time, like a season, thus the adjective ὡραῖος means seasonable or timely, such as describing mature fruit.

In the phrase ἰέναι ὥρᾱ μοί ἐστιν the μοί ἐστιν “it is to me” is a way of saying I have to do something, it is for me to do something, in this case ἰέναι to go. Naturally the word order can be rearranged; take this quote from Plato:

νῦν δ’ ἐμοὶ μὲν ὥρᾱ ποι ἰέναι (see full quote below)

If we ignore the μὲν and δέ, we can translate that literally as “now to me time somewhere to go,” so “now it’s time for me to go somewhere.”

When I say νῦν δ’ ἐμοὶ μὲν ὥρᾱ ποι ἰέναι, I’m using the Romaic Lucian Pronunciation, and I’ll add the link to the pronunciation guide of the variants of Lucian Pronunciation in case you’re not familiar; long story short, the Romaic Lucian Pronunciation was the pronunciation of Greek familiar to the Classical Roman authors, and was also the standard pronunciation of Attic during the 1st century BC. In the Antiochene Lucian Pronunciation it’s νῦν δ’ ἐμοὶ μὲν ὥρᾱ ποι ἰέναι.

So our phrase this week in Romaic Lucian is ἰέναι ὥρᾱ μοί ἐστιν, and in Antiochene Lucian it’s ἰέναι ὥρᾱ μοί ἐστιν. There are other variants of course, but those two span the major changes in the Koine Period. (The biggest here is that the diphthongs have become monophthongs; οι /oi̯ > yː/, αι /ai̯ > ɛː/ )

And here is my phrase, first in Romaic Lucian, then Antiochene Lucian:

Νῦν καὶ ἐμοί γ’ ἐστιν, ὦ φίλε, ὥρᾱ ἰέναι.

Νῦν καὶ ἐμοί γ’ ἐστιν, ὦ φίλε, ὥρᾱ ἰέναι.

“Now it’s also time for me, my friend, to get going.” Thanks so much for your support. Try to come up with your own phrase using this expression, and feel free to share it below this post on Patreon. Χάριτας πολλά̄ς σοι! Ὑγίαινε.

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Guide to the Variants of Lucian Pronunciation

PLATO Phil. Meno {0059.024} Stephanus page 100 section b line 7

νῦν δ’ ἐμοὶ μὲν ὥρα ποι ἰέναι, σὺ δὲ ταὐτὰ ταῦτα ἅπερ αὐτὸς πέπεισαι πεῖθε καὶ τὸν ξένον τόνδε Ἄνυτον, ἵνα πρᾳότερος ᾖ· ὡς ἐὰν πείσῃς τοῦτον, ἔστιν ὅτι καὶ Ἀθηναίους ὀνήσεις.