Barry Hofstetter wrote:It's perhaps more important to remember that πλείων is the comparative of πολύς, and μείζων the comparative of μέγας.
Barry is 100% right here: what's important is to store away in mind the right forms of the irregular comparatives. The etymology of πολύς, πόλλη, πολύ and of πλείων and πλεῖστος, η, ον is more a mater of curiosity linguistic archaeology than of pedagogical utility.
ἀλλ’ ὅμως ... This is a puzzle that I have often pondered. There are two common items of ancient Greek phonology that come into play here:
(1) the "liquidity" of the liquid consonants (λ, ρ, μ, ν) -- we find that the vowels associated with these semi-consonants have a way of floating back and forth between the two sides of the phonema. Thus we have the correlative forms ἄρα, ἄρ, αnd ῥα in Homeric dialect, or the correlative forms of the word for boldness: θράσος and θάρσος, or the correlative forms of the root meaning "strike a blow": βελ/βολ/βαλ/βλη;
(2) the mysterious interaction of the ancient consonantal U, the Greek digamma (ϝ) that is equivalent to the English "w": depending on the neighboring phonemes the digamma may become a vowel ypsilon (υ) or it may evanesce, or it may bring about a doubling of a preceding consonant, as happens when the root form πολϝ is followed by a vocalic ending: πολλή, πόλλοι, πόλλα κτλ.
I haven't found this in an etymological dictionary, but my speculative thinking is
-- that the root of πολύς takes the variant forms of πολϝ, πλοϝ, πλεϝ -- perhaps others, (πελϝ) but at least these;
-- that this is an IE root meaning "abundance" or the like and that it is etymologically akin to English "fill," "full," "flow," "float," "fleet," "flotsam," -- to mention a few -- and that the root (assuming it really is just one root) appears in the Greek adjectives πολύς, πλέος/πλέως (the comparative and superlative forms πλείων, πλεὶστος are better explained from πλεϝ), the noun πλῆθος and the verb πλήθω, the verb πλέω and the nouns πλοῦς (πλόος) and πλοῖον.
I don't know if any of this is true, but as the old Italian mot puts it: "
se non è vero, è ben trovato"