angularius

Forms

angulārius (feminine angulāria, neuter angulārium); first/second-declension adjective^[1]

Etymology

It is formed from Latin angulus (“corner, angle”) + -ārius.^[2][3]

Earliest recorded meaning

The earliest example the OLD records is in an inscription from Puteoli, a law on building a wall, where it is spelled angolaria and refers to pieces set at the corners.^[2][4][3]

Semantic evolution

In Classical Latin it is rare: besides the Puteoli inscription, the Digest quotes the jurist Proculus on a lake called Angularius,^[4][3] which the TLL takes as a proper name.^[4] A Greek–Latin glossary renders it with a Greek word for “of a corner”.^[3]

In the Latin of 16th-century Poland it was used of things done “in a corner”, that is secretly or underhand, and of a stone standing at the corner of a boundary.^[5] Wiktionary traces Romanian ungher “corner” to it.^[1]

Timeline

• 533 AD – The Digest quotes Proculus on the lake called Angularius.^[4][3][6]
• 1520 – A Polish document uses it in the sense “clandestine”.^[5]
• 1598 – A Polish document uses it of a corner boundary stone.^[5]

Meanings

Adjective

1. Placed at a corner, occurring at a corner.^[2][3]
2. (New Latin) Clandestine, underhand.^[5]

References

1. ^ a b Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c Glare, P. G. W., ed. (2012), Oxford Latin Dictionary, 2nd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
3. ^ a b c d e f Georges, Karl Ernst (1913–1918), Ausführliches lateinisch-deutsches Handwörterbuch, 8th ed., ed. Heinrich Georges, Hannover; Leipzig: Hahn
4. ^ a b c d Thesaurus linguae Latinae (1900–), Leipzig: Teubner; Berlin: De Gruyter; open-access ed., Munich: Bayerische Akademie der Wissenschaften
5. ^ a b c d Lexicon mediae et infimae Latinitatis Polonorum (1953–), Kraków: Instytut Języka Polskiego PAN; electronic ed. elexicon.scriptores.pl
6. ^ Köbler, Gerhard (2010), Lateinisches Abkunfts- und Wirkungswörterbuch für Altertum und Mittelalter, online ed., koeblergerhard.de