The corpus record

μέλισσα

melissa · ἡ

bee, wild bees, honey-bees

Generated live from the audited corpus — every figure on this page is a database query, not prose from memory.

Where it lives

De longitudine et brevitate vitae 2 · 11.36/10k
Fragments 3 · 7.53/10k
De juventute et senectute, De vita et morte 1 · 5.44/10k
De Respiratione 3 · 4.94/10k
Works and Days 2 · 3.47/10k
To Demonicus 1 · 3.46/10k
Economics 6 · 3.37/10k
De Somno et Vigilia 1 · 3.36/10k
Meno 3 · 3.07/10k
Ion 1 · 2.49/10k
Iphigenia in Tauris 2 · 2.41/10k
Critias 1 · 2.02/10k

Densest 12 of 41 attested works shown, by occurrences per 10,000 attested tokens.

What it meant

μέλισσᾰ · melissa — LSJ

bee, wild bees, honey-bees

bee, Od. 13.106, etc.; of wild bees, that live in rocks, Il. 2.87, cf. 12.167; of honey-bees, that live in hives, Hes. Th. 594; σμῆνος μελισσᾶν A. Pers. 128 (lyr.), cf. Hdt. 4.194, 5.10:—Phrases: ὥσπερ μέλιττα τὸ κέντρον ἐγκαταλιπών Pl. Phd. 91c; ὄνος ἐν μελίτταις ‘a hornets’ nest’, Crates Com. 36; cf. μέλι I.2 fin.

the term μέλισσα was applied

1 poets

to poets, from their culling the beauties of nature, ἔνθεν ὡσπερεὶ μ. Φρύνιχος . . μελέων ἀπεβόσκετο καρπόν Ar. Av. 748; μ. Μούσης Id. Ec. 974 (lyr.); μ. Ἤρινναν Μουσῶν ἄνθεα δρεπτομέναν AP 7.13 (Leon. or Mel.); esp. of Sophocles, Sch. Ar. V. 460.

2 priestesses

to the priestesses of Delphi, Pi. P. 4.60; of Demeter and Artemis, Sch. Pi. l.c., Porph. Antr. 18; of Cybele, Did. ap. Lact. Inst. 1.22.

3 any pure, chaste being

in Neo-Platonic Philos., any pure, chaste being, of souls coming to birth, Porph. Antr. 19; of the Moon, ib. 18.

III honey

= μέλι, honey, ὕδατος, μελίσσης, μηδὲ προσφέρειν μέθυ S. OC 481: metaph., γλώσσης μελίσσῃ καταρρυηκέναι Id. Fr. 155; of poetry, AP 9.505.6; ἑσμὸς μελίσσης appears to be corrupt in Epin. 1.7.

= ὀβολός, Hsch.

In the wild

μελισσᾶν · melissan Aeschylus, Persians 126–132
μέλιττα · melitta Aristophanes, Birds 1 (DIORISIS sentence 579)
μελίτταις · melittais Aristophanes, Clouds (DIORISIS sentence 39)
μέλιττα · melitta Aristophanes, Ecclesiazusae 2 (DIORISIS sentence 792)
μελιττῶν · melittōn Aristotle, De juventute et senectute, De vita et morte (DIORISIS sentence 10)
μέλιττα · melitta Aristotle, De longitudine et brevitate vitae (DIORISIS sentence 22)

6 of 68 attestations shown. Ask for more.

Where it came from

No etymology authority pointer is recorded for this lemma yet — an honest gap, not an omission. The etymological dictionaries (Beekes, Chantraine, Frisk) are matched incrementally.

Downloads

Word record (JSON)·Concordance (CSV)·Frequencies (CSV)·Cite (BibTeX)

CC BY 4.0 with receipt attribution — every file carries its license line. What is exportable

Ask the librarian

Ask about μέλισσα →