digamma
digamma, the digamma
†digammos, duplex littera
F littera in speciem figurata est cujusdam litterae quae ~a nominatur, quia duos apices ex gamma littera habere videatur. ad hujus soni similitudinem V consonantem loco eius nostri posuerunt, ut votum virgo: ~a enim oportuit poni, Fotum Firgo
~a, i. vau vel F
vos Angli ‥, qui pro Θ frequentius Þ scribitis ‥ sicut pro ~a Ƿ
digama
- , δίγαμμα, the digamma: tuum, your letter F (for fenus), i. e. your interestbook.
(δίγαμμα). A name given by grammarians of the first century to Vau, the sixth letter of the early Greek alphabet, but which in the classical had ceased to be used and was known only by inscriptions. The digamma (“double gamma”) gets its name from its form or ϝ. Its sound was originally something like that of English W. Its form in the hieratic Egyptian was ; in the ancient Phoenician, ; the square Hebrew, . It is found in Peloponnesian inscriptions as late as the sixth century B.C., but it had disappeared from the Ionic or Eastern Greek alphabet before the middle of the seventh century B.C., being retained only as a numeral=6. From the Chalcidian or Western alphabet it was transmitted to Italy, retaining its position as the sixth letter, but acquiring the sound of F, a labio-dental fricative. See alphabet.
That its influence remained after it ceased to be written, is shown by the fact that in the Homeric poems it prevents elision where a final vowel stands before a word which originally had the digamma (e. g. φίλα ϝείματα δύσω). (See dialects.) Too much was made of this fact at one time, and Mr. Payne Knight even published a text of Homer with the digamma restored, a part of this text being reprinted in this country by Dr. Charles Anthon in his edition of the Iliad. But more recent scholarship shows that many of the supposed instances are not those of words that originally were digammated, but which rather once had an initial spirant, s or j—e. g. εἰς ἅλα (ς)ἆλτο: ἔτι γὰρ (ς)ἔχον. See Hadley's Essays, pp. 56-80 (1873).
Words which finally lost the digamma in Greek still often show it in the cognate languages—e. g. οἶκος, Lat. vicus; οἶνος, Lat. vinum; ὀΐς (ὀϝις), Lat. ovis; ῥήγυυμι, Lat. frango; ἔργον, Eng. work. In Laconian it frequently became β—e. g. βάννας for ϝάναξ, βέργον for ϝέργον, etc.
The word δίγαμμα is not found earlier than the first century A.D., when it occurs in the grammarians. Dionysius of Halicarnassus describes it, but gives it no name (i. 20). Terentianus Maurus calls it δίγαμμος littera (163 K). Macrobius uses the word δίγαμμον (sc. στοιχεῖον) (De Vero. vi. 13). Quintilian (i. 7, 27) calls it Aeolica littera (cf. i. 4, 7), but it is not found in the later Lesbian inscriptions, and in Alcaeus and Sappho it is represented by β before ρ (e. g. βράκος for the Homeric ῥάκος= ϝράκος). See Monro, Homeric Grammar (1882); and King and Cookson, Principles of Sound and Inflexion, pp. 166-171 (Oxford, 1888),