arboreus

Forms

arboreus (feminine arborea, neuter arboreum); first/second-declension adjective^[1] Varro has the spelling arborius.^[2][3]

Etymology

It is from Latin arbor (“tree”) + -eus.^[3][1][4] De Vaan traces arbor to Proto-Italic *arþōs and Proto-Indo-European *h₃rdʰ-ōs (“height, uprightness”), connecting it with arduus (“high”); the original sense would have been “uprightness”, later “upright tree”, although the other languages with this root use a different stem for “high”.^[5]

Earliest recorded meaning

Köbler records it first in Virgil,^[6] who calls fruit arborei fētūs, “the young of the trees”;^[2] the OLD's earliest quotation is from the poet Cornificius, frūgibus arboreīs, “fruits of trees”.^[3][2]

Semantic evolution

Its first sense is “of trees”: Ovid speaks of the leaves, roots and shade of trees,^[2] and Propertius and Ovid call foliage arborea coma, “the tree's hair”.^[2] It also means “like a tree”: Virgil's stags have cornibus arboreīs, branching antlers, and a huge spear is ingēns, arboreum, like a tree trunk;^[2][7] Pliny the Elder uses it of plants that grow to the size of a tree, as opposed to shrubby ones.^[3][2] The land surveyor Siculus Flaccus uses it of wooden tablets.^[3] Medieval writers in Britain used it of fruit growing on trees and of the treetops.^[8]

Timeline

• 70–19 BC – Virgil uses it of fruit and of branching antlers.^[2][6]
• 43 BC–18 AD – Ovid uses it often of leaves, roots and shade.^[2][6]
• 23/24–79 AD – Pliny the Elder uses it of plants the size of a tree.^[3][2][6]

Meanings

Adjective

1. Of or belonging to trees, tree-.^[3][2][1]
2. Resembling a tree; branching; of the size of a tree.^[3][2]
3. Made of wood, wooden.^[3][1]

Related words

• arbor
• arbustum
• arduus

References

1. ^ a b c d e f Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l Lewis, Charlton T.; Short, Charles (1879), A Latin Dictionary, Oxford: Clarendon Press
3. ^ a b c d e f g h i Glare, P. G. W., ed. (2012), Oxford Latin Dictionary, 2nd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
4. ^ Thesaurus linguae Latinae (1900–), Leipzig: Teubner; Berlin: De Gruyter; open-access ed., Munich: Bayerische Akademie der Wissenschaften
5. ^ de Vaan, Michiel (2008), Etymological Dictionary of Latin and the other Italic Languages, Leiden Indo-European Etymological Dictionary Series 7, Leiden; Boston: Brill
6. ^ a b c d Köbler, Gerhard (2010), Lateinisches Abkunfts- und Wirkungswörterbuch für Altertum und Mittelalter, online ed., koeblergerhard.de
7. ^ Conte, Gian Biagio; Pianezzola, Emilio; Ranucci, Giuliano (2010), il Latino: Vocabolario della lingua latina, 3rd ed., Florence: Le Monnier
8. ^ Latham, R. E., D. R. Howlett, R. K. Ashdowne, et al. (1975–2013), Dictionary of Medieval Latin from British Sources, London: British Academy / Oxford University Press