The derivation
The Greek word for mind keeps its secret. On this, remarkably, all three authorities agree: νόος is "no doubt an old inherited verbal noun (cf. λόγος, φόρος, etc.), though there is no certain etymology" (Beekes, EDG s.v. νόος, marked ⟨?⟩); "Zweifellos ein altererbtes Verbalnomen… obwohl eine sichere Anknüpfung fehlt" — doubtless inherited, securely connected to nothing (Frisk, GEW s.v. νόος); "Nom d'action à vocalisme o, mais sans étymologie" (Chantraine, DELG s.v. νόος, Et.). An o-grade action noun of impeccable Indo-European shape whose parent verb vanished.
The candidates, and the authorities' verdicts on them:
- **Germanic *snutrs*** — Gothic "wise, prudent." Beekes: "possible, but not compelling." Frisk reports Schwyzer's elaboration (a base sense "scent, sniffing out") and rules that it "goes far beyond the provable." Chantraine calls the same développements "hardis" — audacious.
- νεύω "to nod" — mind as the meaningful nod (Prellwitz; Brugmann adding πινυτός "sagacious"; defended more recently by Heubeck, whom Beekes cites alongside LIV's root for the verb). Frisk: "nicht vorzuziehen" — not to be preferred.
- νέομαι "to return home" — the most evocative: Mycenaean names like wi-pi-no-o (Ἰφίνοος) may belong to the homecoming root, and Chantraine reports Ruijgh's "synthèse ingénieuse, mais incertaine" linking νοέω to Gothic nasjan "to save," with a semantic path from "save" to "observe" on the model of Latin servo. A mind cognate with νόστος — noticing as a kind of returning — though Chantraine files it as ingenious, not established.
- Also weighed and dismissed: νέω "to swim" (Kieckers), Sanskrit nāya- "leading" (McKenzie) — "abzulehnen" (Frisk).
Root
No root commands assent. The pointer claims record the candidates the entries discuss (Beekes: the νεύω and *nes- lines, the latter "formally possible, but the semantics seem to be difficult"; Chantraine: a posited stem now-) — candidates, not conclusions.
In the corpus
1,233 occurrences across 20 works, and the trajectory is the inverse of θυμός's: modest in Homer (Iliad 48, Odyssey 54 — earliest at Il. 1.132 and, fittingly, in the Odyssey's proem: the man who "came to know the νόον" of many peoples, Od. 1.3), steady through Plato and Aristotle (Republic 40, Metaphysics 35), then utterly dominant in Plotinus: 872 occurrences in the Enneads — νοῦς as divine hypostasis, over two-thirds of the corpus total. Beekes even records the late verb this ascent demanded: νόομαι, "to be converted into νόος" (Plotinus). Chantraine marks the hinge: already in Anaxagoras and Plato's Timaeus the word names "l'intelligence suprême."
The word's world
In Homer the line between νόος and θυμός "cannot be drawn with the same precision" as the firm wall between θυμός and ψυχή (Snell, The Discovery of the Mind) — νόος perceives and plans, but feeling leaks in. It is porous to the gods: Aphrodite's charms "steal away the noos even of one thinking wisely" (Il. 14.217, cited in Sullivan, Psychological and Ethical Ideas), and Homer measures minds against the divine standard — "the nous of Zeus is ever stronger than that of men" (Il. 16.688, quoted in the Oracle's Psyche in Antiquity). Snell's formula for it: "the organ of clear images" — the part of a person to which the world becomes visible. That organ, etymology-less, became the Greek name for intellect as such.
Authorities: Beekes, Etymological Dictionary of Greek (Brill 2010) s.v. νόος (scan p. 1074, #4361); Chantraine, Dictionnaire étymologique de la langue grecque s.v. νόος (scan pp. 773–774, #5675); Frisk, Griechisches etymologisches Wörterbuch s.v. νόος (scan pp. 1294–1295, #4112). Interpretive sources retrieved from the Oracle library (Classical Philology & Ancient Thought): Snell, The Discovery of the Mind (1953); Sullivan, Psychological and Ethical Ideas (1995); Bremmer, The Early Greek Concept of the Soul (1983). Scholarly anchors named by the dictionaries: von Fritz, Classical Philology 38/40/41; Marg, Der Charakter; G. Jäger, "Nus" in Platons Dialogen (1967). Corpus figures: Logoi corpus, live. Receipt: soul-word-journey-v0.