How does "five-formed / five-shaped", πεντάμορφη, mean "beautiful"?
Such that it's used as in translation of "Beauty and the Beast" movie titles, and accepted by Google Translate?
1 Answer
In Classical Greek, πεντάμορφος is a perfectly straightforward compound adjective made up of πεντά- ‘five-, penta-’ and μορφή ‘shape’. Its meaning is also transparent, ‘having five shapes’, and it is apparently an epithet describing evil things.
The Modern Greek word πεντάμορφος is a different word, which does not mean ‘five-shaped’. You can’t see it from the word itself, but it is actually a compound of πεντά- ‘five-’ (here used as an intensifier meaning ‘five-fold’ or ‘five times’ – or more generally, ‘very’) and the adjective όμορφος ‘beautiful’, with reduction of the sequence -αο- to just -α-. Όμορφος itself is a corruption of earlier ἔμορφος, which comes from Classical εὔμορφος ‘well-shaped’ or ‘having good shape’, a transparent compound of εὐ- ‘good-, well-’ and μορφή.
So the modern word that is used in the Greek translation of the title Beauty and the Beast doesn’t mean ‘five-shaped’, but literally ‘five-times beautiful’. (That sounds clumsy in English, but think of it like ‘thrice beautiful’, except with five instead of three.)
answered Aug 24 at 16:20
