aereus

Forms

aereus (feminine aerea, neuter aereum); first/second-declension adjective^[1] In Virgil the form aereī is scanned as two syllables.^[2][3]

Etymology

It is from Latin aes (“copper, bronze”) + -eus.^[2][1][3]

Earliest recorded meaning

Its first example is in Varro's Menippean Satires, which speak of an aerea galea, a bronze helmet.^[2][4]

Semantic evolution

Virgil has bronze thresholds and a bronze sword, and uses it too of things bound or armoured with bronze: a wheel with a bronze rim in the Georgics and a ship's bronze-clad stern in the Aeneid.^[2][5] Germanicus applied it to the human race of the bronze age.^[2]

From the metal it passed to what bronze produces: Laberius has a bronze gleam, and Statius the clamour and crash of bronze instruments.^[2][3] Pliny the Elder uses it for the colour of copper, of the bristles of wild pigs and of a cloudy stone with copper-coloured veins.^[2][3] As a noun, aereus was a copper coin.^[2]

Ecclesiastical Latin keeps the sense “of copper, bronze or brass”,^[6] while Niermeyer records a medieval sense “sky blue”.^[7]

Timeline

• 116–27 BC – Varro speaks of a bronze helmet.^[2][4]
• 106–43 BC – Laberius uses it of a gleam of bronze.^[2][4]
• 70–19 BC – Virgil uses it of bronze-bound wheels and ships.^[2][4]
• 23/24–79 AD – Pliny the Elder uses it of copper colour.^[2][4]

Meanings

Adjective

1. Made of copper, bronze or brass.^[2][5]
2. Bound or armoured with copper or bronze.^[2][5]
3. Of sounds or gleams: produced by bronze instruments or weapons.^[2][3]
4. Of the colour of copper or bronze.^[2][3]
5. (Medieval Latin) Sky blue.^[7]

Noun

1. A copper coin.^[2]

Related words

• aes

Usage notes

The OLD and Gaffiot list a separate, rare āereus, a variant of āerius “of the air”.^[2][8][1]

References

1. ^ a b c d e Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r 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. ^ a b c d e Köbler, Gerhard (2010), Lateinisches Abkunfts- und Wirkungswörterbuch für Altertum und Mittelalter, online ed., koeblergerhard.de
5. ^ a b c Lewis, Charlton T.; Short, Charles (1879), A Latin Dictionary, Oxford: Clarendon Press
6. ^ Stelten, Leo F. (1995), Dictionary of Ecclesiastical Latin, Peabody, Mass.: Hendrickson
7. ^ a b Niermeyer, J. F. (1976), Mediae Latinitatis Lexicon Minus, Leiden: Brill
8. ^ Gaffiot, Félix (2016), Dictionnaire latin-français, new ed. by Gérard Gréco et al. (Gaffiot 2016), online ed.