Bacchus

Forms

Bacchus m (genitive Bacchī); second declension^[1]

Etymology

It is borrowed from Ancient Greek Βάκχος (Bákkhos).^[2][3][1] Köbler, after Frisk, calls the Greek name a foreign word of unknown origin.^[4] Poets never scan the first syllable short, and manuscripts often write ⟨Bach-⟩.^[5]

Earliest recorded meaning

Ennius, in his tragedies, names Bacchus pater, “father Bacchus”.^[2][4]

Semantic evolution

The OLD describes Bacchus as a vegetation god, probably Lydian, identified with Dionysus and with the Italian god Līber, and linked above all with the vine.^[2] He is invoked with the cry euhoe in Virgil and io in Horace.^[2] By metonymy the name stood for the vine itself and for wine, as in Virgil's favos … dilue Baccho (“dilute the honeycombs with Bacchus”); Lucretius already comments on people who would rather say Bacchus than the proper word for wine.^[2]

Inscriptions with the form bacchus are dated between 59 BC and AD 398.^[6] English borrowed it in the late 15th century.^[7]

Timeline

• 204–169 BC – Ennius names Bacchus pater.^[2][4]
• 70–19 BC – Virgil uses the name for the vine and for wine.^[2][4]
• late 15th century – Borrowed into English as the name of the god.^[7]

Meanings

Proper noun

1. (mythology) Bacchus, god of the vine and of wine, identified with Dionysus.^[2][3]
2. (metonymy) The vine.^[2][1]
3. (metonymy) Wine.^[2][1]

Related words

• English Bacchus

Usage notes

A separate word bacchus, also from Greek, is the name of a sea fish in Pliny the Elder, also called myxon.^[2][3] Beekes leaves the origin of the Greek fish name open.^[8]

References

1. ^ a b c d e f Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k Glare, P. G. W., ed. (2012), Oxford Latin Dictionary, 2nd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
3. ^ a b c Lewis, Charlton T.; Short, Charles (1879), A Latin Dictionary, Oxford: Clarendon Press
4. ^ a b c d Köbler, Gerhard (2010), Lateinisches Abkunfts- und Wirkungswörterbuch für Altertum und Mittelalter, online ed., koeblergerhard.de
5. ^ Thesaurus linguae Latinae (1900–), Leipzig: Teubner; Berlin: De Gruyter; open-access ed., Munich: Bayerische Akademie der Wissenschaften
6. ^ Kaše, Vojtěch; Heřmánková, Petra; Sobotková, Adéla et al. (2024), LIST: Latin Inscriptions in Space and Time, v1.2 (EDCS + EDH), Aarhus: SDAM, doi:10.5281/zenodo.10473706
7. ^ a b Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
8. ^ Beekes, Robert S. P. (2010), Etymological Dictionary of Greek, with the assistance of Lucien van Beek, Leiden Indo-European Etymological Dictionary Series 10, Leiden; Boston: Brill