From shallowness to tartness

I have written elsewhere about the Stymphalis lake, known from one of the labours of Hercules who destroyed the monstrous Stymphalis birds. I mentioned the relation of the Greek word to Eng. stumble and generally Germanic words related in meaning to swamp. I want to draw attention again to the duality of the appearance or disappearance of nasal consonants (m,n) before labials (b,p,f,v,w) in Indoeuropean words. You might ask how the meaning of words such as stub and stubble can be associated with that of swamp and I would say that the general idea is one of slushing about in a swamp, the feeling of dulling of sensation associated with obstruction of movement. So a stub is something obtuse, attenuated in sensory quality and the feeling of stubble in the face dulls the senses as well. To point out the duality, besides stumble, think of stump, not only the physical object but the action of inhibition of expression too. The North Germanic languages (Norwegian, Swedish, Danish, Icelandic) are a fine example of disappearance of English nasals before labials. How does that general idea of attenuation compare to (unfortunately for the greater part, Ancient) Greek vocabulary? The Demetrakos dictionary (9 volume edition, Athens 1958, re-edited Athens 2000, ISBN 960-8158-08-7, SET 960-8158-00-1) abounds in them: Styptikos, causing stypsis, which is contraction (attenuation of length). Stypoma, Modern, Demotic stoupoma, the filling of a hole, a fissure by a plug (the idea being the "blocking" of the hole). Styphelos, rough, hard (obstructing the senses). Styphlos, a variant of the aforementioned meaning of styphelos. Further, according to Hesychius: Styphlon or styphelon; rough, hard, heavy, slow, solid. Styphros, dense, compact, solid, tight, as opposed to soft, flabby: styphrai sarkes, tight flesh, such as that of athletes. Hesychius: styphron; steremnion; heavy. Stypho, to contract, to pack, to condense.

However, besides this general direction in meaning, there is another sense of this group of words, the main expression of which is "sharp taste". I regard this as an evolution of the earlier sense, in the sense that something "short, obstructed" can have an after-effect of arousing an acidity in feelings brought about by being disconcerted from the "dulling". After all, a stub can have sharp edges where cut, a stubble can feel hard to the touch, stumbling can cause the alarm of the danger of falling, etc. This is reflected in the second meaning of styphelos provided by Demetrakos, op. cit., which is one of acid, bitter taste. A third meaning is one of character, which is cited as strict, hard. This is also found in the entry for styphodes, which is someone having a "styphos", that is ill-mannered, character. In styphos, he gives the single meaning of providing a taste of stypsis, a taste of quince, medlar, or unripe pears. Yet the entry styphotes is cited as Late and Modern "denseness, stiffness", with a quotation from Plutarch's Ethics opposing to manotes, "softness, mildness".