κύβος

Difficult to trace. The word passed to and from a number of languages (compare Latin cubus (mass, quantity)). Pokorny reconstructed Proto-Indo-European *keu(b)- 'to bend, to turn' (Pokorny:1959:588), but this root is not generally accepted.

According to Beekes, words for dice are often loans and the Lydians claimed to have invented the game of κύβος, suggesting a possible loan from Lydian.[1]

κύβος • (kúbos) m (genitive κύβου); second declension

1. (geometry) square
2. (geometry) cube
3. die, dice
   • 46 CE – 120 CE, Plutarch, Julius Caesar 32:

     τέλος δὲ μετὰ θυμοῦ τινος ὥσπερ ἀφεὶς ἑαυτὸν ἐκ τοῦ λογισμοῦ πρὸς τὸ μέλλον, καὶ τοῦτο δὴ τὸ κοινὸν τοῖς εἰς τύχας ἐμβαίνουσιν ἀπόρους καὶ τόλμας προοίμιον ὑπειπὼν, ‘Ἀνερρίφθω κύβος,’ ὥρμησε πρὸς τὴν διάβασιν καὶ δρόμῳ τὸ λοιπὸν ἤδη χρώμενος εἰσέπεσε πρὸ ἡμέρας εἰς τὸ Ἀρίμινον καὶ κατέσχε.

     télos dè metà thumoû tinos hṓsper apheìs heautòn ek toû logismoû pròs tò méllon, kaì toûto dḕ tò koinòn toîs eis túkhas embaínousin apórous kaì tólmas prooímion hupeipṑn, ‘Anerrhíphthō kúbos,’ hṓrmēse pròs tḕn diábasin kaì drómōi tò loipòn ḗdē khrṓmenos eisépese prò hēméras eis tò Aríminon kaì katéskhe.

     • 1919 translation by Bernadotte Perrin

       But finally, with a sort of passion, as if abandoning calculation and casting himself upon the future, and uttering the phrase with which men usually prelude their plunge into desperate and daring fortunes, ‘Let the die be cast,’ he hastened to cross the river; and going at full speed now for the rest of the time, before daybreak he dashed into Ariminum and took possession of it. [– See the die is cast.]

4. chance
5. (mathematics) cube, cubic number
6. (anatomy) vertebra; hollow above the hip of cattle

• Russian: куб m (kub), ку́бик m (kúbik)

• κύβος in Liddell & Scott (1940) A Greek–English Lexicon, Oxford: Clarendon Press
• κύβος in Liddell & Scott (1889) An Intermediate Greek–English Lexicon, New York: Harper & Brothers
• κύβος in Trapp, Erich, et al. (1994–2007) Lexikon zur byzantinischen Gräzität besonders des 9.-12. Jahrhunderts [the Lexicon of Byzantine Hellenism, Particularly the 9th–12th Centuries], Verlag der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften
• Woodhouse, S. C. (1910) English–Greek Dictionary: A Vocabulary of the Attic Language‎, London: Routledge & Kegan Paul Limited.
  • cube idem, page 188.
  • dice idem, page 222.

From Ancient Greek κύβος (kúbos).

κύβος • (kývos) m (plural κύβοι)

1. (geometry) cube

• κυβικός (kyvikós, “cubic”)