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Bible Dictionaries
Euraquilo
Hastings' Dictionary of the New Testament
or (εὐρακύλων)
This word is found nowhere in ancient literature except in Acts 27:14. It is the name given to the tempestuous wind (ἅνεμος τυφωνικός, vorticosus, ‘whirling’) which, suddenly beating down from the central mountains of Crete, caught St. Paul’s ship in its passage from Pair Havens to Phœnice, drove it to the island of Cauda, and finally wrecked it on the coast of Malta. The word is a hybrid, made up of Eurus (εὗρος), the cast wind-an ordinary meaning in the Latin poets, though εὖρος properly meant the south-east-and Aquilo, the north-east wind, so that it denotes the east-north-east wind. ‘Euro-auster’ (═ εὐρόνοτος) is an analogous compound. Euraquilo corresponded to the Greek καικίας, for which the Latins had no specific name: ‘Quem ab oriente solstitiali excitatum Graeci καικιάν vocant, apud nos sine nomine est’ (Seneca, Nat. Quaest. v. 16). St. Luke avoids the correct Greek term, characteristically preferring the vivid language which he had doubtless heard the mariners themselves use. His addition ὁ καλούμενος perhaps indicates that he knew the word to be confined to nautical slang. It was doubtless coined by the sailors and traders of the Levant, whose successors at the present day still call the dreaded wind the ‘Gregalia’-the final form of the corruption of ‘Euraquilo,’ just as ‘Egripou’ is of ‘Euripus.’
εὐροκλύδων (TR [Note: Textus Receptus, Received Text.] ; ‘Euroclydon,’ Authorized Version ) is one of a great number of textual variants. It appears in two 9th cent. uncials, H and L, and the majority of the cursives. The oldest authorities, א AB, have εὐροκύλων; in the Codices Bezae and Ephraemi the account of the voyage is wanting. A reviser of the Vaticanus has inserted γ over Α and Δ after Κ, and has altered ΔΩΝ into ΔΩΝ, but in so doing he has left the right foot of the Δ visible beyond the corner of his own Δ.
Literature.-J. Smith, Voyage and Shipwreck of St. Paul, 1880, p. 119f.; E. Renan. St. Paul, 1869, p. 551; Conybeare and Howson, St. Paul, 1877, ii. 402.
James Strahan.
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Hastings, James. Entry for 'Euraquilo'. Hastings' Dictionary of the New Testament. https://www.studylight.org/dictionaries/eng/hdn/e/euraquilo.html. 1906-1918.
