Hi, All:

This morning I ran across the word "daedal" in a poem by Sharon Olds:

I try to see
this house without her, without her pure
depth of feeling, without her creek-brown
hair, her daedal hands with their tapered
fingers, her pupils dark as the mourning cloak's
wing, but I can't...

http://www.albany.edu/writers-inst/olds.html

I'm curious--does 'daedal' claim its roots from the mythical Daedalus? M-W offers only that the etymology is from the Latin daedalus and the Greek daidalos. I guess, then, this is a chicken/egg question: did the craftsman Daedalus get his name from the existing Greek/Latin roots, or was it the other way around? How does one go about checking the chronology of word derivation, barring the purchase of an OED?

Thanks in advance.

Hi Mandy, and welcome to the board.

There are others better qualified in the classics, but in the meantime I offer you this:

dae·dal (dçd'l)
adj.
Ingenious and complex in design or function; intricate.
Finely or skillfully made or employed; artistic.
[Latin daedalus, from Greek daidalos.]


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The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition Copyright © 2000 by Houghton Mifflin Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved.

I have always understood Daedalus' name to have been descriptive (of his status as a great craftsman, hence its use by James Joyce), therefore drawn from the older etymology. I will observe others' posts with interest.

did the craftsman Daedalus get his name from the existing Greek/Latin roots, or was it the other way around?

When looking at the etymology of a term, the linguist would look to see how the term was moved from one language to another. Whether the Greeks called expert craftsmen daidalos (in honor of the mythical guy) or if the actual craftsman was called Daidalos in honor of the existing term for craftsman is an unknown. How the culture treated the coining of words/names like that is a little irrelevant to the study of the word's etymology.

Case in point: bandaid. In America, this is the generic term for the medical bandage one puts over cuts. Bandaid is actually a trademarked name for a product. To most Americans, a bandaid is a bandaid even if it is made by Cuts-R-Us. To the Greeks, an expert craftsman may have been called Daidalos or daidalos because they may have been synonomous.

I think the word came into our language because of its mythical aura.

From the site http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Troy/1664/preface.html, I took:
Also meaning "creative," as well as "artistic and skillful," is the term daedal [L daedalus], after Daedalus, the legendary builder of the fantastic Cretan labyrinth.

I think we're going to have to resort to OED; Webster seems a bit ambiguous:
[L. daedalus cunningly wrought, fr. Gr. ?; cf. ? to work
cunningly. The word also alludes to the mythical D[ae]dalus (Gr. ?, lit., the cunning worker).]

{the ?s come from an inability to transcribe Greek}

btw, a related word is logodaedaly, meaning the arbitrary or capricious coinage of words.

tsuwm btws, a related word is logodaedaly, meaning the arbitrary or capricious coinage of words

So logically, the poet was referring to her [arbitrary or capricious] hands!

yes, if by arbitrary or capricious you mean "too clever by half".

The source I use for Greek roots is the on-line Liddell & Scott's lexicon at http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/cgi-bin/resolveform.

There are plenty of words beginning daidal-, and it sort of looks like the name Daidalos is just a personification of the adjective 'cunning, skilful'.

However, it doesn't give any simpler root. I've searched thorugh dad- and dand- and can't think what else it might be. The root looks un-Greek. The word looks like a borrowing into Greek, that is, and that reopens the question of which came first: was it perhaps a Cretan word borrowed then personified, or a Cretan person borrowed then turned into a common word?