A Greek word changes its ending with its work in the sentence, so one word can have dozens of forms. A dictionary cannot list them all, so it lists each word once, under one form: the dictionary form, or headword. In the first four lines of the Iliad, ἔθηκε is found under τίθημι, and κύνεσσιν under κύων.
| Kind of word | Headword | What it means |
|---|---|---|
| Noun | λόγος, ὁ | the nominative singular, then the article: ὁ masculine, ἡ feminine, τό neuter |
| Noun that changes its stem | ἀνήρ, ὁ, ἀνδρός | the genitive as well, since the stem (ἀνδρ-) is not the nominative's |
| Noun of both genders | κύων, ὁ and ἡ … gen. κυνός | “dog” can be masculine or feminine |
| Adjective | ἀγαθός, ή, όν | the masculine, then the endings of the feminine (ἀγαθή) and the neuter (ἀγαθόν) |
| Verb | τίθημι, ἀείδω | the first person singular of the present, “I place”, “I sing”; the meaning is given simply: “set, put, place” |
Headwords copied from LSJ, the dictionary the site's look-up uses (its marks for long and short vowels left out).
Getting from a form to its headword. Take off the ending (the tables of forms show them). A past tense usually begins with an augment, ἐ-: take that off too, so ἔθηκε “placed” leads to θη-, the stem of τίθημι. Homer often leaves the augment out: τεῦχε is a past tense of τεύχω. And a few common words change their stem altogether, as Διός, the genitive of Ζεύς, or ἀνδρῶν from ἀνήρ; dictionaries print such forms at the head of the entry.
The answers are GLAUx's analysis of these lines, checked by hand; the meanings are the first senses in LSJ.
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