σκυτάλη

• σκύταλον (skútalon)

The origin is unknown.

σκῠτάλη • (skŭtálē) f (genitive σκῠτάλης); first declension

1. A staff, a cudgel, a club
2. (historical) A scytale, a baton used in Sparta as a cypher for writing dispatches
3. A pole or staff like those of a sedan chair
4. A strickle for levelling grain
5. A wooden tally or ticket on a money bag
6. A rod of metal or ivory
7. A scourge whip
8. A handle or lever in a machine
9. A handspike for turning a wheel
10. A sucker from a stem
11. A serpent of uniform roundness and thickness
12. (anatomy) A phalanx

• → Arabic: إِسْقَاطُولِيّ (ʔisqāṭūliyy, “the beam of wood or handle or lever used in simple machines”)
• → English: skytale
• > Greek: σκυτάλη (skytáli) (inherited)
• → Latin: scytalē
  • → English: scytale

• “σκυτάλη”, in Liddell & Scott (1940), A Greek–English Lexicon, Oxford: Clarendon Press
• σκυτάλη in Bailly, Anatole (1935), Le Grand Bailly: Dictionnaire grec-français, Paris: Hachette
• Beekes, Robert S. P. (2010), Etymological Dictionary of Greek (Leiden Indo-European Etymological Dictionary Series; 10), with the assistance of Lucien van Beek, Leiden, Boston: Brill, →ISBN

From Ancient Greek σκῠτάλη (skŭtálē)

σκυτάλη • (skytáli) f (plural σκυτάλες)

1. (athletics) baton (in relay races)
2. (historical) scytale (simple Spartan cryptographic device)

There is a rare genitive plural form: σκυταλών