Abarim Publications' online Biblical Greek Dictionary
ιππος
The familiar noun ιππος (hippos) means horse — hence our words hippodrome and hippopotamus. The latter word literally means river-horse (from hippos and ποταμος, potamos, meaning a flow or river), which indicates rather distinctively that whoever first called the hippo a river-horse had a wholly different view of either animal as we do today. Why regular horses and river-horses were perceived to be similar is no longer clear. Both have the tendency to congregate, but so do countless other animals. Here at Abarim Publications we guess that both the horse and the hippo were named after their explosive strength.
The word ιππος (hippos) stems from the Proto-Indo-European root "hekus-", meaning quick or swift. Similarly, the Hebrew word for horse is identical to the word for swallow (the bird): סוס (sus).
Horses were very common animals in Greco-Roman times, but they were used mostly by and associated with the military. Hence the horse doesn't get mentioned much in the New Testament, with the obvious exception of the Book of Revelation. The only mention of the horse outside Revelation is in James 3:3, where a man's tongue is compared to a ship's rudder and the bit in the mouth of a horse. Altogether, our noun occurs 17 times in the New Testament; see full concordance.
For a look at the astounding parallels between the four horses of Revelation 6 and the four natural forces (gravity, electromagnetism, and the strong and weak nuclear forces), see our riveting article on the Four Horses of Revelation.
Our noun comes with two derivatives:
- The noun ιππευς (hippeus) means horse-man and denotes a mounted soldier (Acts 23:23 and 23:32 only).
- The substantive ιππικον (hippikon) itself derives from the adjective ιππικος (hippikos), which literally means "pertaining to (the) horse(s)", but which was also used to denote rank or status of cavalry men. This latter word occurs in the Bible only in Revelation 9:16.
A brief note on Slow Horses
Jewish literature (and this includes the entire Bible, both Testaments), tends to tell stories within stories within stories, or wheels within wheels within wheels, if you please; see our article on stars and fractals: αστηρ (aster). That means that where the grey masses might enjoy an off-the-shelf tale of trickery and "fictional" Men In Black or Ghostbusters or whatever, the better informed see an intricate commentary on the very real world.
The delightful TV series Slow Horses (2022), to name another example, does just that: the Greek word for slow, idle or unemployed, namely αργος (argos) combines the familiar article of negation α (a), meaning without, with the noun εργον (ergon), meaning work, but is by accident identical to the adjective αργος (argos), which means white or glittering (or "swift/rapid" of all things), from the noun αργυρος (arguros), meaning silver (this is also the word for money) or star-spangled (see γαλα, gala, milk, hence our word galaxy or Milky Way). Hence too the story of Jason and the Argonauts.
Jackson Lamb means Son-of-Jacob, The Lamb. Diana "Lady Di" Taverner (the keeper of the inn in which there was no place for you-know-who) is the wayward HRH and chief of MI5 (מיה, or agent of Yah). And River Cartwright (that is cart-wrought or chariot builder), obviously, refers to the River (the Euphrates of Persia) and מרכבה (merkava), the Chariot Literature of Kabbalah.