The smooth breathing (Ancient Greek: ψιλὸν πνεῦμα psilòn pneûma; Modern Greek: ψιλή psilí ; Latin: spīritus lēnis) is a diacritical mark used in polytonic orthography. In ancient Greek, it marks the absence of the voiceless glottal fricative /h/ from the beginning of a word.
Some authorities have interpreted it as representing a glottal stop, but a final vowel at the end of a word is regularly elided (removed) where the following word starts with a vowel — and elision would not happen if the second word began with a glottal stop (or any form of stop consonant). In his Vox Graeca, W. Sidney Allen accordingly regards the glottal stop interpretation as "highly improbable".
The smooth breathing ( ᾿ ) is written as on top of one initial vowel, on top of the second vowel of a diphthong, or to the left of a capital, and also in certain editions on the first of a pair of rhos. It did not occur on an initial upsilon, which always has rough breathing (thus the early name ὕ hy, rather than ὔ y).
The smooth breathing was kept in the traditional polytonic orthography even after the /h/ sound had disappeared from the language in Hellenistic times. It has been dropped in the modern monotonic orthography.
Famous quotes containing the words smooth and/or breathing:
“There are acacias, a graceful species amusingly devitalized by sentimentality, this kind drooping its leaves with the grace of a young widow bowed in controllable grief, this one obscuring them with a smooth silver as of placid tears. They please, like the minor French novelists of the eighteenth century, by suggesting a universe in which nothing cuts deep.”
—Rebecca West (1892–1983)
“The breathing in unison ...”
—T.S. (Thomas Stearns)