araneus

Forms

arāneus (feminine arānea, neuter arāneum); first/second-declension adjective^[1] As a noun, arāneus, -ī m.^[2][1]

Etymology

The OLD takes the adjective as borrowed from Ancient Greek ἀραχναῖος (arakhnaîos, “of a spider”), adapted, and the noun as the adjective used substantively.^[2] De Vaan treats the noun, together with arānea “spider's web; spider”, as possibly a loanword from ἀράχνη (arákhnē, “spider”), with the Greek cluster taken over as /gn/, after which the velar was lost and the vowel lengthened.^[3] Since elsewhere Greek /kʰm/ became Latin ⟨cum⟩, he also allows that the Greek and Latin words were borrowed separately from a common source.^[3] The TLL compares the same Greek words,^[4] and Wiktionary and Köbler derive it from the Latin noun for the spider.^[1][5]

Earliest recorded meaning

The noun is found from Plautus on,^[3] meaning a spider: in the Asinaria a character speaks of knocking the spiders' webs off the columns (columnis deici operas araneorum).^[2]

Semantic evolution

As a noun it is the spider, in Lucretius, Catullus, Pliny the Elder and Seneca,^[6] and also a venomous sea fish with a spine on its back, the weever.^[2][6]

The adjective, from Columella on, means “of spiders”:^[3] Pliny calls the phalangion a little creature of the spider kind.^[2] Mus araneus was the shrew mouse, whose bite Columella describes as harmful.^[2][4]

Timeline

• c. 250–184 BC – Plautus uses the noun for spiders.^[2][5]
• 96–55 BC – Lucretius uses it for the spider.^[6][5]
• 1st century AD – Columella uses mus araneus for the shrew.^[2][5]
• 23/24–79 AD – Pliny the Elder uses it for the weever and the adjective “of the spider kind”.^[2][5]

Meanings

Adjective

1. Of spiders.^[2][6]
2. mus arāneus, the shrew mouse.^[2][4]

Noun

1. A spider.^[2][6]
2. A venomous sea fish, the weever.^[2][6]

Word family

• arāneolus
• arāneōsus
• arāneum

Related words

• arānea

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 Glare, P. G. W., ed. (2012), Oxford Latin Dictionary, 2nd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
3. ^ 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
4. ^ a b c Thesaurus linguae Latinae (1900–), Leipzig: Teubner; Berlin: De Gruyter; open-access ed., Munich: Bayerische Akademie der Wissenschaften
5. ^ a b c d e Köbler, Gerhard (2010), Lateinisches Abkunfts- und Wirkungswörterbuch für Altertum und Mittelalter, online ed., koeblergerhard.de
6. ^ a b c d e f Lewis, Charlton T.; Short, Charles (1879), A Latin Dictionary, Oxford: Clarendon Press