Ancient Greek

Noun

πτῶσῐς • ‎(ptôsis) f ‎(genitive πτώσεως); third declension

1. falling, a fall
   • 380 BCE, Plato, The Republic 604.c

     ὥσπερ ἐν πτώσει κύβων

     as it were in the fall of the dice

2. (grammar) case
3. (grammar) inflection
   • 384 BCE – 322 BCE, Aristotle, Poetics 1457.a.18

     τὸ γὰρ ἐβάδισεν; ἢ βάδιζε πτῶσις ῥήματος κατὰ ταῦτα τὰ εἴδη ἐστίν.

     "Walked" and "Walk!" are verbal conjugations of this kind.

4. arrangement of terms in a syllogism
   • 384 BCE – 322 BCE, Aristotle, Prior Analytics 42.b.30
   • 384 BCE – 322 BCE, Aristotle, Posterior Analytics 94.a.12

Inflection

Related terms

Hyponyms

Descendants

• Greek: πτώση ‎(ptósi)
• Latin: dēclīnātiō (calque)

References

• πτῶσις in Liddell & Scott (1940) A Greek–English Lexicon, Oxford: Clarendon Press
• πτῶσις in Liddell & Scott (1889) An Intermediate Greek–English Lexicon, New York: Harper & Brothers
• «πτῶσις» in Bailly, Anatole (1935) Le Grand Bailly: Dictionnaire grec-français, Paris: Hachette
• “G4431”, in Strong’s Exhaustive Concordance to the Bible, 1979