Skyphoses

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. Deep, two-handled drinking cups used in ancient Greece, the plural form of a single vessel of that kind
2. Plural forms referring to the wide, deep ancient Greek drinking vessels that had two handles and a flared rim
3. Several deep two-handled cups of the kind used in ancient Greek society for drinking wine at symposia

Etymology: "Skyphoses" is the plural of "skyphos," a term for a deep, two-handled drinking cup used in ancient Greece. The Greek word itself is ancient and well attested in Attic and other dialects, and it is the source of the English term, which entered the language through scholarly writing about classical archaeology. The word is therefore a learned borrowing rather than a word that passed through everyday speech. Because the cup is a specific vessel type, the word was adopted by archaeologists and art historians to name a recognisable shape in pottery collections, and the plural form follows the Greek-derived pattern of "-os" nouns becoming "-oi" in Greek and "-oses" or "-os" in English scholarly use. Readers encountering it will usually meet it in museum catalogues and academic descriptions of Greek ceramics.