Coronis (textual symbol) explained

A coronis (Greek, Ancient (to 1453);: κορωνίς, korōnís,  Greek, Ancient (to 1453);: κορωνίδες, korōnídes) is a textual symbol found in ancient Greek papyri that was used to mark the end of an entire work or of a major section in poetic and prose texts.[1] The coronis was generally placed in the left-hand margin of the text and was often accompanied by a paragraphos or a forked paragraphos (diple obelismene).

The coronis is encoded by Unicode as part of the Supplemental Punctuation block, at .

Etymology

Liddell and Scott's Greek–English Lexicon gives the basic meaning of Greek, Ancient (to 1453);: korōnis as "crook-beaked" from which a general meaning of "curved" is supposed to have derived.[2] French: [[Pierre Chantraine]]|italic=no concurs and derives the word from Greek, Ancient (to 1453);: κορώνη (Greek, Ancient (to 1453);: korōnē), "crow", assigning the meaning of the epithet's use in reference to the textual symbol to the same semantic range of "curve".[3] But, given the fact that the earliest coronides actually take the form of birds, there has been debate about whether the name of the textual symbol initially referred to use of a decorative bird to mark a major division in a text or if these pictures were a secondary development that played upon the etymological relation between Greek, Ancient (to 1453);: korōnē, "crow", and Greek, Ancient (to 1453);: korōnis, as in "curved".[4]

See also

Sources

Notes and References

  1. Schironi 2010: 10.
  2. Liddell-Scott 1996: 983 s.v. Greek, Ancient (to 1453);: κορωνίς ii. 2.
  3. P. Chantraine 1968: 570 s.v. Greek, Ancient (to 1453);: κορώνη.
  4. Schironi 2010: 16–17.