Etymologically
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araneus

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Pronunciation

  • Classical: [aˈraː.ne.ʊs][1]
  • Ecclesiastical: [aˈraː.ne.us][1]

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

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