δυστήνων δέ τε παῖδες ἐμῷ μένει ἀντιόωσιν.
I had δύστηνος figured as an adjective meaning something like "unhappy." But when I looked around for what noun it could be referring to, I didn't see anything that was plural genitive, which left me stumped. Resorting to a translation, I saw that δύστηνος was here being used as a noun, and δυστήνων παῖδες meant the sons of the unhappy. Then I checked the complete entry in Cunliffe:
Code: Select all
δύστηνος, ον [δυσ-. Second element obscure]. Wretched,
unhappy, miserable, unfortunate Π445, Χ477: α55,
δ182, ε436, λ76, ν331, ρ10, 483, 501, τ354, ω289.--
Absol.: δυστήνων παῖδες Ζ127 = Φ151. Cf. Χ59: ζ206,
η223, 248, κ281, λ80, 93, υ224.
Is this something that (a) can be done with any adjective at all, or (b) can be done only with certain special words?
In case a, Cunliffe's note would just be him doing what he does with his concordance, breaking usages down into tiny chunks. Would the way to tell it's happening be that the adjective doesn't seem to have any noun that it agrees with?
In case b, would the idea just be that this happens to be a word that is both an adjective and a noun? In this case, I would just have to learn that fact when I learn a piece of vocabulary such as δύστηνος.
Thanks in advance to anyone who can clarify.