Talk:ψυχή

Considerations

While the Hebrew information is doubtlessly interesting, it doesn't strike me as being etymological in nature. Furthermore, I have listed anima as a related term; it is not remotely linguistically related, but rather culturally. These words are much more analogous to one another than to any sort of English term. If there is some better sort of way to represent that, I would appreciate knowing. Medellia 04:49, 3 November 2006 (UTC)

Breath?

Are there modern (not 19-th century) dictionaries listing "breath" as a meaning of ψυχή? LSJ does not give it as a meaning and in fact argues against it. Conversely, Woodhouse's English-Greek dictionary: a vocabulary of the Attic language does not list ψυχή as a possible translation of "breath".  --Lambiam 10:37, 19 December 2010 (UTC)

I suppose that it is inferred from the presumed etymology. It would be interesting to find out if there are any Ancient Greek texts that are unambiguous usages in that sense. {{rfv-sense}} might help, but I don't know who is capable of finding such citations. DCDuring TALK 11:33, 15 January 2011 (UTC)

RFV

The following discussion has been moved from Wiktionary:Requests for verification.

This discussion is no longer live and is left here as an archive. Please do not modify this conversation, but feel free to discuss its conclusions.

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Are there modern (not 19-th century) dictionaries listing "breath" as a meaning of ψυχή? LSJ does not give it as a meaning and in fact argues against it. Conversely, Woodhouse's English-Greek dictionary: a vocabulary of the Attic language does not list ψυχή as a possible translation of "breath".  --Lambiam 21:08, 6 March 2011 (UTC)

That's not really the question for RfV; the question is, did people, in Ancient Greek written sources, use ψυχή for breath, and can we find those attestations?--Prosfilaes 23:47, 6 March 2011 (UTC)

Seconded; we normally only allow primary sources. Rarely for poorly attested languages we will allow dictionary use "in good faith". The problem is, I don't know who can verify this; certainly not me. It would be a shame for this to fail merely because we have nobody to even attempt to cite it. Mglovesfun (talk) 12:43, 7 March 2011 (UTC)

I have added some texts and some references. If we delete the meaning "breath" at the end of this RFV, the references mentioning it will be sufficient in the entry. - -sche 00:50, 11 March 2011 (UTC)

I have cited existing senses and added senses. I have not found proof for "breath" (literal/casual, not life-breath) nor two senses which I have now added RFVsense to: "the conscious self, as the seat of emotions, desires" and "{{philosophy}} the universal spirit". I may find proof of the first one soon (let both sit here a month). - -sche 04:31, 12 March 2011 (UTC)

Unattested senses RFV-failed. - -sche (discuss) 01:05, 14 July 2011 (UTC)