μέλκιον

Unknown. Only attested as a gloss in Hesychius.

Perhaps from Proto-Indo-European *melk-, a relative or variant of the root *h₂melǵ- (“to milk”) preserving older semantics, with cognates such as Old Church Slavonic млѣко (mlěko), Lithuanian malkas, and Latvian malks, but the lack of reflex of *h₂ in Greek and unusual *ǵ : *k alternation are unexplained. Perhaps both the Greek and Balto-Slavic are via a foreign intermediates (e.g., the Balto-Slavic may be via Germanic, where Grimm's law was applied), but the Greek word with its divergent semantics is inexplicable.

μέλκιον • (mélkion)

1. (hapax legomenon) spring, fountain

   Synonym: κρήνη (krḗnē)

   • [5th c. CE, Hesychius of Alexandria, Γλώσσαι, Μ:

     μέλκιον· κρήνη. νύμφαι. παίγνιον

     mélkion; krḗnē. númphai. paígnion

     mélkion: spring (in: "Nymphs" (poem))]

• “μέλκιον”, in Liddell & Scott (1940), A Greek–English Lexicon, Oxford: Clarendon Press
• μέλκιον, in ΛΟΓΕΙΟΝ [Logeion] Dictionaries for Ancient Greek and Latin (in English, French, Spanish, German, Dutch and Chinese), University of Chicago, since 2011
• Hesychius' Lexicon: μ