σκῐά

σκιά (skia, "skee-AH") is the Greek word for shade or shadow, and the record locates it firmly in reflective prose more than in the open air. It appears 149 times across 54 works. Its densest home is philosophy: the Enneads holds 23 occurrences and the Republic 15 — the two together just over a quarter of all attestations. After them the word turns to scripture and the wisdom-books: Job (10), Psalmi (Psalms, 10), Lives of Eminent Philosophers (6), and Isaias (Isaiah, 5). The shadow, in this corpus, is a thing thinkers reason with and the psalmists take shelter under.

The lexica agree on the core sense and add its edges. LSJ (Liddell–Scott–Jones, 1940) gives "shadow, reflection, image," and records the proverbial τὴν αὑτοῦ σκιὰν δέδοικεν, "he fears his own shadow." Beekes (Etymological Dictionary of Greek, Brill 2010) glosses it "shade" and notes a second, concrete life: "variegated hem or edging of a dress," attested in Hellenistic inscriptions and papyri. Chantraine (Dictionnaire étymologique de la langue grecque, 1968–80) reads it as "ombre" — shade as protection from the sun, but also "obscurity, a hidden place," and, applied to a person, weakness or "fantôme" (phantom). Frisk (Griechisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 1960–72) glosses it "Schatten" (shadow) and catalogues its many compounds.

On the origin, three pointers are matched. Beekes reconstructs a Proto-Indo-European *skeh₁-ih₂-, "shadow"; Chantraine files it under a root candidate *ski-; Frisk points to a Tocharian cognate (Tocharian B skiyo). Chantraine also relays Havers's suggestion that the family's irregularities may stem from a linguistic taboo — the hedge is his, not mine.

The citable surfaces run through tragedy — Aeschylus's Agamemnon, Sophocles's Ajax — and into Acts 5.15.

If a shadow can be a hem, a phantom, and an uninvited guest, which of these did the Greeks feel they were naming first?