ὀβελός

• ὀβολός (obolós)
• ὀδελός (odelós) — Doric
• ὀβελλός (obellós) — Thessalian

Possibly an alteration of βέλος (bélos), but the initial vocal cannot be accounted for. According to Beekes and Furnée, the word is clearly Pre-Greek.

ὀβελός • (obelós) m (genitive ὀβελοῦ); second declension

1. a spit, rod

   Synonym: βουπόρος (boupóros)

   • 460 BCE – 420 BCE, Herodotus, Histories 2.41
   1. (ὀβελὸς λίθινος) a pointed square pillar, obelisk
2. a horizontal line
   • Lucianus, Essays in Portraiture Defended 24

The horizontal line was used as a critical mark to point out that a passage was spurious, but with one point below and one above (÷) (ὀβελὸς περιστιγμένος (obelòs peristigménos)) it denoted superfluous passages, especially in philosophical writings.

• → English: obelus
• → Italian: obelo

• “ὀβελός”, in Liddell & Scott (1940) A Greek–English Lexicon, Oxford: Clarendon Press
• “ὀβελός”, in Liddell & Scott (1889) An Intermediate Greek–English Lexicon, New York: Harper & Brothers
• “ὀβελός”, in Autenrieth, Georg (1891) A Homeric Dictionary for Schools and Colleges, New York: Harper and Brothers
• ὀβελός in Bailly, Anatole (1935) Le Grand Bailly: Dictionnaire grec-français, Paris: Hachette
• ὀβελός in Cunliffe, Richard J. (1924) A Lexicon of the Homeric Dialect: Expanded Edition, Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, published 1963
• Woodhouse, S. C. (1910) English–Greek Dictionary: A Vocabulary of the Attic Language‎^[1], London: Routledge & Kegan Paul Limited.
  • skewer idem, page 780.
  • spit idem, page 802.
• Beekes, Robert S. P. (2010) Etymological Dictionary of Greek (Leiden Indo-European Etymological Dictionary Series; 10), with the assistance of Lucien van Beek, Leiden, Boston: Brill, →ISBN