Jochen and I are both glad that somene, if only the writers at
Star Wars,
had some
Sprachgefühl.
Tri-skelês, neuter in -es, is in ancient Greek, first, an adjective. We have only upper case
.
If its prime form were a noun, I would be sure that Jochen was right, but since it is an adjective one would form the plural with whatever noun-gender was expressed or understood.
Like most I-E adjectives, it freely became a substantive, as, in Latin,
boni are
good men, and
bona are
good things.
As a substantive it denotes that
shield device formed of three bent legs, making a sort of whirligig expressive of running, I think. It probably has appeared here because we
had that little silver fraction with what was hard for many to see as a bent
leg, but which perhaps means a third of a perhaps a tritemorion, one bent
leg being a third of three (I may be disgracing myself on the language of
Greek fractions) or
diobol and a third of a
drachm?
Anyhow, -skel- as in skeleton.
Pat L.