Etymologically
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adulescentulus

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Pronunciation

  • Classical: [a.dʊ.ɫeːsˈkɛn.tʊ.ɫʊs][1]
  • Ecclesiastical: [a.du.leʃˈʃɛn.tu.lus][1]

Forms

adulēscentulus m (genitive adulēscentulī); second declension[1]

Etymology

It is the diminutive of adulēscēns (“young man”), with the suffix -ulus, first as an adjective “very young” and then as a noun.[2][3][1] The base is the participle of adolēscō (“to grow up”), which de Vaan derives from an old stative ⟨*alēre⟩ “to be growing up” beside alō (“to feed, raise”), from Proto-Italic *ale- (“to feed”) and Proto-Indo-European *h₂el- (“to feed, raise”).[4]

Earliest recorded meaning

Plautus is its first author in the TLL, who has the adjective in the Miles gloriosus, where an old man's kindness is “quite youthful”, and meretrīcem adulēscentulam, “a young courtesan”.[3]

Semantic evolution

As an adjective it is very youthful or quite young, and Terence has a father who left “a young daughter”.[2][3] As a noun it is a young man or mere youth;[2][5] Lewis and Short note that Cicero calls himself adulēscentulus at twenty-seven.[2][5] Wiktionary also gives a young recruit.[1]

Köbler finds it in Hegesippus and in medieval texts.[6]

Timeline

  • c. 250–184 BC – Plautus has the adjective.[3][6]
  • 190–159 BC – Terence of a young daughter.[3][6]
  • 81–43 BC – Cicero calls himself adulēscentulus.[5][6]

Meanings

Noun

  1. A young man, mere youth; a young recruit.[2][5][1]

Adjective

  1. Very young, quite youthful.[2][3]

Word family

  • adulescentula

References

  1. ^ a b c d e f Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
  2. ^ a b c d e f Glare, P. G. W., ed. (2012), Oxford Latin Dictionary, 2nd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
  3. ^ a b c d e f Thesaurus linguae Latinae (1900–), Leipzig: Teubner; Berlin: De Gruyter; open-access ed., Munich: Bayerische Akademie der Wissenschaften
  4. ^ de Vaan, Michiel (2008), Etymological Dictionary of Latin and the other Italic Languages, Leiden Indo-European Etymological Dictionary Series 7, Leiden; Boston: Brill
  5. ^ a b c d Lewis, Charlton T.; Short, Charles (1879), A Latin Dictionary, Oxford: Clarendon Press
  6. ^ a b c d Köbler, Gerhard (2010), Lateinisches Abkunfts- und Wirkungswörterbuch für Altertum und Mittelalter, online ed., koeblergerhard.de