Huh, I've never encountered that! The usual word for teaching is διδάσκω.
στοιχεῖον (a noun) is a "syllable of a word," or by extension, an "element" or "building block." (The plural of this word is the name of Euclid's famous geometry textbook, the Elements. It's also the word used by Plato and Aristotle for the "elements" if Fire, Air, Water, and Earth, though interestingly Empedocles never uses the term.)
The verb form would therefore be "to sound out the syllables" of something. My dictionary says that this can therefore mean "to teach the basics," but are you familiar with the Greek Magical Papyri? A lot of the magic spells in there function by "sounding out" sacred syllables...
Yep, I encontered it through my ongoing translation of Dornseiff's "The Alphabet in Magic and Mysticism" (see here - you may need to log in to see it) - he has a long discussion on the noun.
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στοιχεῖον (a noun) is a "syllable of a word," or by extension, an "element" or "building block." (The plural of this word is the name of Euclid's famous geometry textbook, the Elements. It's also the word used by Plato and Aristotle for the "elements" if Fire, Air, Water, and Earth, though interestingly Empedocles never uses the term.)
The verb form would therefore be "to sound out the syllables" of something. My dictionary says that this can therefore mean "to teach the basics," but are you familiar with the Greek Magical Papyri? A lot of the magic spells in there function by "sounding out" sacred syllables...
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