aper

Forms

aper m (genitive aprī); second declension^[1]

Etymology

It is inherited from Proto-Italic *apro- (“boar”), inherited from Proto-Indo-European *h₁pr-o-.^[2] Cognate with Umbrian abrunu (“boar”), Latvian vepris (“castrated boar”), Old Church Slavonic вепръ (veprŭ, “boar”) and Old High German ebur (“boar”);^[2][3][1] de Vaan sets up a different ablaut grade, *h₁ep-r-, for the Germanic forms.^[2] Varro derived it from ⟨asper⟩, since boars live in rough places.^[3]

Earliest recorded meaning

De Vaan and Köbler give Plautus as its first author.^[2][4] In the Casina a character boasts that he will catch two boars in one wood.^[3][5]

Semantic evolution

It is the wild boar, hunted, as the Erymanthian boar that Hercules killed, and eaten: Horace says that the ancients praised rank boar's flesh, and Juvenal makes it a delicacy.^[3][5] Proverbs used it: to catch two boars in one wood was to kill two birds with one stone, and letting boars into clear springs, in Virgil, stood for a perverse, thoughtless act.^[5] Pliny the Elder records the boar among the old standards of the legions, and it was also the name of a fish.^[3][5]

Church Latin glosses it “wild boar”, as in the Psalm's aper dē silvā, the boar out of the wood.^[6][5]

Timeline

• c. 250–184 BC – Plautus in a proverb.^[3][4]
• 81–43 BC – Cicero of the Erymanthian boar.^[5][4]
• 65–8 BC – Horace of boar's meat.^[3][4]
• 23/24–79 AD – Pliny the Elder of a legionary standard.^[3][4]

Meanings

Noun

1. A wild boar.^[3][1][5]
2. Boar's flesh, as food.^[3]
3. The figure of a boar used as a military standard.^[3][1]
4. A kind of fish.^[5]

Word family

• apra
• aprarius
• apriculus
• aprinus
• aprugineus
• aprūgnus

Related words

• verrēs
• sūs

Usage notes

Ūnō in saltū duōs aprōs capere, “to catch two boars in one wood”, was the Latin for killing two birds with one stone.^[5][3] A female boar is apra in Pliny, though Varro uses aper of the sow.^[5]

References

1. ^ a b c d e f Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d de Vaan, Michiel (2008), Etymological Dictionary of Latin and the other Italic Languages, Leiden Indo-European Etymological Dictionary Series 7, Leiden; Boston: Brill
3. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l Glare, P. G. W., ed. (2012), Oxford Latin Dictionary, 2nd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
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 d e f g h i j Lewis, Charlton T.; Short, Charles (1879), A Latin Dictionary, Oxford: Clarendon Press
6. ^ Stelten, Leo F. (1995), Dictionary of Ecclesiastical Latin, Peabody, Mass.: Hendrickson