Greek Word of the Week 003 Τί πάσχεις; What’s wrong? (Patreon)

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Greek WotW 003

Τί πάσχεις; What’s wrong?

Ὡς ἀσμένῳ μοι ἦλθες, ὦ φίλτατε! How happy I am that you’re here for another Ancient Greek expression. Ἀλλὰ τί πάσχεις; But what’s wrong?

The verb πάσχω πείσομαι ἐπαθον πέπονθα can be a pain, because it means many things, like to suffer. Its most neutral meaning is “to undergo,” “to experience,” to be “passive,” hence “pathetic” from παθετικός.

Many Indo-European verbs display a vowel-alternation in different tenses, referred to as e-grade, ο-grade, and zero-grade. The aorist ἐπαθον has the root παθ-, which is the zero-grade; it’s just the two consonant radicals, and the simplest vowel to throw between them: /a/.

To this we add the incohative, meaning fixin’ to do, in -σκ-, giving us *πάθσκω which metathesizes the aspiration to *πάτσχω, and then euphanizes to πάσχω.

The o-grade πονθ- is audible in the perfect tense πέπονθα.

The e-grade πενθ- is in the future tense: we add sigma, and then the middle/deponent ending, πένθ-σ-ομαι, then in πένθσομαι the dental stop fuses with the sigma, giving us *πένσομαι, and then the nasal is lost in front of the sigma, nasalizing and lengthening the preceding vowel, and eventually the nasalization is lost: πείσομαι in Classical Attic Pronunciation, and πείσομαι in Romaic Lucian Pronunciation.

Τί πάσχεις; means What’s wrong? What do you suffer? What’s up? Are you ill?

We could also ask in the aorist, τί ἐπαθες; Or in the perfect: τί πέπονθας;

Ἀλγῶ τὰ σκέλη μακρὰ̄ν ὁδὸν διεληλυθώς: My legs ache from having walked a long way.

Take care of your legs, dear Patron, for the journey up Parnassus is arduous, but worth every step of the trek. Ἴθι χαίρων!