Stoupi (στουπί): the bung, the stopper sealing the hole in a wine barrel
We encounter the word in Asikis’ song “How They Celebrate in the Villages” (1934):
In Keratea and Koropi
they drink wine from the bung.
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And is it related to what we call “getting plastered” when someone is drunk?
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We use stoupi (στουπί) — in its other, better-known sense — to wipe up oil and things like that. So it absorbs liquid. (I imagine most of us have the image of the petrol-station attendant checking our oil by dipping a rod into the reservoir and then wiping it with a stoupi.)
I therefore assumed that the expression “στουπί στο μεθύσι” implied someone so soaked in wine that the stoupi is soaked in various filthy liquids.
But now, seeing that stoupi also means the bung of a barrel, I wondered: hang on, did they bung it with a stoupi?
I had a look at the dictionaries to see whether this meaning was corroborated. I didn’t get a complete picture of the subject, because stoupi meaning “bung” isn’t a common word, but I realised that these are two different words. The petrol-station stoupi is etymologically related to blotting paper (which does the same job: soaking up ink from a sheet of paper freshly written on with a pen) and to the Ancient Greek styppeion, whereas the barrel stoupi has a different etymology and is connected with stoubono (= to plug or stop up).
Since this latter explanation (the one involving stoubono) seems very logical, I conclude that, yes, stoupi in “στουπί στο μεθύσι” obviously refers to the bung, which spends its time submerged — on the inside — in wine.
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Edit - PS: There is also a folk etymology going around which, treating all these stoupia as one word, somehow derives STOP from it.
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Pericles, the barrel bung is one thing: it is located right at the top (when the barrel is lying on its side ready to receive wine), and it is square and large enough to take the fairly thick hose used to fill the barrel; stoupi is another thing entirely. Stoupi refers to a small hole fairly high up on the end of the barrel, which also has the tap fitted at the bottom. In the past, they sealed the hole with stoupi; nowadays, there is a special screw-in bung for the job. To taste wine through the bung, you would have to take a ladle with a long handle and dip it into the wine through the bung. But they taste it by opening the (formerly) stoupi, which is now a screw-in bung, and holding a little glass close by to fill it. They close the bung by „building it up“ with plaster.
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No, poor thing! Since the bung is in the top hole through which the barrel was filled, it does not touch the wine, which reaches to within a few centimetres below it; and, having no hands with which to dip down and grab some wine, it cannot become blind drunk—not only that, it cannot taste a single drop by itself…
Hang on, let me get this straight. So, at the front end of a barrel lying on its side, right at the top, there’s a hole that they plug? And what is it for—does it let air in so the liquid can flow when they open the tap?
So, Niko, are you saying that this little hole is called stoupi (στουπί)? But that’s a different sense from the bung, the stopper that plugs the hole in a wine barrel. Does the same word mean both the hole and its stopper?
You also say that in the past the stopper really was made of oakum. If so, then we don’t have two different words, as I thought, but one word with several meanings that aren’t unrelated. So the verb stoumpóno (στουμπώνω, ‘to stuff/plug’) fits in here too.
In that case, the story about stop may not, after all, be a folk etymology. They trace it back to the Latin stuppare, ‘to stop up/seal/plug’, which in turn they trace back to the Greek styppeion (στυππείον), ‘oakum’. From this perspective, I find it convincing.
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Yes, okay, “cap” was the wrong word—I meant the plug for the little hole.
The small hole high up on the front of the barrel is used to take a sample and determine when fermentation is complete. Once it has finished and we want to start drawing off the wine, we insert the tap into the bung at the bottom.
I didn’t understand.
And since „I didn’t understand“ is far too short for the platform to accept, let me ask this as well: does the same word, στουπί, really mean both the small hole and its stopper? Because it seemed to me that you use the word τάπα in a similar way too.
No, in a barrel placed on its side, the bung is the fairly large square hole on top, through which the barrel is filled; afterwards, the bung is sealed with plaster. The στουπί is the small test hole in the head, high up.
Right, so both openings are named with words that normally mean lids/stoppers/closures: τάπα for the large hole, στουπί for the small one.
You wine producers are a strange bunch, though! 
So, the verse…
…doesn’t mean “through the plug / stopper of the hole”, but through the hole itself.
It admittedly makes rather more sense.
“Stoupi” is the bung: “a plug made of rags or tow, etc., used to seal the bunghole of wine casks” (Proia Dictionary)
The actual meaning of the saying is: „The people of Keratea and Koropi are wine producers“.
Right, I’m sorted. Thanks. The rest of you can sort out whether you’re going to plug the oakum with oakum and the bung with a bung.
Hmm, I’m having second thoughts; perhaps you’re not after all.
The other day, I caught myself talking about the petrol filler opening in the car, calling it the “cap”. If you’d asked me, I would have said that a cap is, of course, the stopper we use to plug the hole, not the hole itself. And yet here I am, calling the hole a “cap” too, without even realising it.
And when I realised it, I thought: how else could you call it? We certainly never call it a “hole”. Nor do we call it a “socket” or an “opening”, or anything similar.
So I suppose we all have a tendency to sometimes use the word for the stopper to refer to certain holes.