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Greek and Latin Word Studies

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 February 2009

Edwin W. Fay
Edwin W. Fay
Affiliation:
Austin, Texas.
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Extract

Cicero, in his letters (Fam. 9, 22), writes the following sentence (§ 2): memini in senatu disertum consularem ita eloqui: ‘hanc culpam maiorem an illam dicam?’ potuit obscenius? ‘non’ inquis ; ‘non enim ita sensit’ Wherein does the coarseness lie? Critics (cf. Tyrrell in his edition of the letters) find in (il)lam dicam a word ‘ landicam,’ which they define by ‘clitoris’. But possibly culpam is, whether by equivoque or by definition, the offending word (cf. Shuckburgh's translation, 3, p. 295, where, after characterizing the interpretation just mentioned as far-fetched, he suggests an equivoque between culpam and culleus).

Type
Research Article
Information
The Classical Quarterly , Volume 1 , Issue 1 , April 1907 , pp. 13 - 30
Copyright
Copyright © The Classical Association 1907

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References

page 13 note 1 The passages in square brackets belong to a revision of the MS. made in the late autumn, whereas the first copy was sent in the spring.

page 13 note 2 For this reference I am indebted to Professor Minton Warren.

page 14 note 1 For ï see Otto in I.F. 15. 35 sq.

page 14 note 2 view of this meaning, comparing the gloss glandiolae quae circa collum et in inguinibus nasci solent , it may be that we should correct the gloss from landica to (g)landicis . But, on the other hand, a scholiast to Aristophanes explained the plural of by τ⋯ (see Liddell and Scott, Lex. s.v., vi).

page 15 note 1 Cf. the equivoque in Thos. Heywood's The Wise Woman of Hogsdon, ii. 2, init.:…whom should we meet just in the nick…:: Just in the nick, man! :: In the highway I meant, sir.

page 15 note 2 Much more explicit is the following: τó δ⋯ (Rose's Soranus, § 16, p. 181). In modern medical terminology colpo. is very common in the sense of ‘vaginal’.

page 15 note 3 Semantically comparable are Germ, scheide, Lat. vulva (cf. Am. Jr. Phil. 26, 52, fn. 3); also Lat. vāgīna, if it belongs with ‘breaks’; see also Skeat, Concise Etym. Dict. s.v. Sheath.

page 16 note 1 See below, No. 2, x, end.

page 16 note 2 Christ reads .

page 18 note 1 I deprecate too great refinement of definition in words that have reached us after nobody knows many centuries of unrecorded colloquial usage: for an instance in point we may take Fr. couper from *colopare ‘to box on the jaw,’ but how generalized and then how specialized in definition.

page 18 note 2 In Lucretius vapor = heat.

page 19 note 1 [So also Danielson and Johannson as cited by Walde.]

page 19 note 2 I cite the following authorities for the words : Cent. Dict., s.v. smoke, 7 ‘To suffer as from overwork or hard treatment; be punished.… 8. to emit dust, as when beaten;…trans. 6. to raise dust from by beating; “dust”’; Oxford Dictionary s.v. dust, v.1. ‘7 a) trans, to beat, thrash; b) intrans. to strike, beat’ (citations for each use from 1612): ‘cf. dust v.2’ <much earlier, of same sense, but of untraced origin>.

page 24 note 2 A highly interesting form is Lat. quirītat «whines’, closer in meaning to queritur, but in voice, vocalism, and formation (*quῖrītus being a rhotacised doublet, with reduced vocalism, of quaesitus) closer to quaerit.

page 25 note 1 ‘The o-colour of this reduplication in Greek is to be seen in , .’

page 26 note 1 [1 It is of great interest at this point to read § 1678 of Lane's Latin Grammar: autem is often used in questions, as metuo credere:: credere autem? PI. Ps. 304, I am afraid to trust :: trust do you say?]

page 26 note 2 [2 The article on negumate stands as it was written but in the spring of 1906. It was already in the hands of the editor before Walde's Etymological Lexicon was forwarded to me by my Leipzig bookdealer. I now see that the explanation of negumate has been anticipated by Stolz, and the derivation of opinor from *opvinor—which I no longer hold—was suggested by Meillet in Mém. Soc. Ling. 9, 55 sq., prior to the time (1899) I wrote the review quoted above. It proves to be Zimmermann and not Stowasser who has anticipated me in the publication only of the derivation of autumo from autem: suum cuique; qui primus palam dederit palmam habeto ; but the coincidences have their interest, and if Walde, s.v. pingo, speaking of the two lines of meaning exhibited by that group, writes ‘wahrscheinlicher sind beide Bedeutungsentwicklungen nach Hirt (brieflich) auf der Anwendung der Wz. zur Bezeichnung des Tättowierens begründet’, he might have quoted from me (Am. Jr. Phil. 21, 198) ‘pingit .. with a formal meaning of “paints”, developed from a vernacular “pricks, tattoos”’.]

page 28 note 1 [I shall shortly publish in Modern Language Notes an explanation of the phonetic relations of hostis and ξ⋯νFos. Not until this occurred to me did from I think that the equation of ξ -with h-s in these words was any proof of their identity, but if we start with a preposition-adverb eghos ‘extra’ (Brugmann writes eĝhs, Gr. Gram.3 § 79, 5, but the ĝh seems due to the now discarded belief that O. B. izῖ belonged here), then hostis is from *(e)ghos-stis ‘extra stans’ (on the suffix -stis see Class. Rev. xx. 255, 6) and ξ⋯νFos from * (e)gh(o)s-enwos ‘extra-inhabitans’ (-enwos from en ‘in’ ±wos: the root wes ‘to dwell’). This explanation requires some readjustment of the following numerical arrangement of the senses of hostis.]

page 28 note 2 Servius in his note on Aen. 4, 424, states, and I doubt not correctly, that hostis was by some interpreted as ‘guest’(= ‘hospes’).

page 29 note 1 I find myself completely nonplussed by Walde's entry under hostorium, ‘streichholz (spät): volks- etymologische Umgestaltung von ustorium (: uro), wie ustulare “als Opfer darbringen und verbrennen” später nach hostia zu hostilare gemacht wurde (Keller, Volksetym. 44).’ So far as Priscian and the glosses tell us, the hostorium was a ‘strickle’ ( = ‘streich holz’), but Walde's explanation suits a ‘friction match’ ( = ‘zündhölzchen, streichholz’).