arbutus

Forms

arbutus f (genitive arbutī); second declension^[1]

Etymology

The origin is unknown.^[2][3] Lewis and Short connected it with arbor (“tree”), but Köbler, following Walde and Hofmann, finds all attempts at an explanation unsatisfactory, and Wiktionary reports that Schrijver finds no reliable etymology.^[4][5][1]

Earliest recorded meaning

Köbler records it first in Varro,^[5] who names it among the trees that bear more fruit higher up.^[3]

Semantic evolution

It is the strawberry tree, Arbutus unedo.^[2][4] Virgil names it as sweet food for weaned kids and says it can be grafted with the walnut, Horace has goats seeking it and a man lying under a green arbutus, and Ovid has it loaded with red fruit.^[4][3] Columella counts it among shrubs and wild fruit trees and mentions honey that comes from it, and Pliny the Elder says that the Greeks have two names for its fruit, comaron and memaecylon, and gives unedo as another name.^[3] The grammarians note that the tree is feminine and its fruit neuter, arbutum, while Horace has the plural arbutos.^[3] In medieval British sources it can mean the crab-apple tree, as in fifteenth-century glosses and a deed of 1467, and a glossary renders it with Old English æspe, which the DMLBS takes as poplar.^[6]

Timeline

• 116–27 BC – Varro names it among fruit trees.^[3][5]
• 70–19 BC – Virgil names it as food for goats.^[4][5]
• 65–8 BC – Horace has a man resting under it.^[4][5]
• 23/24–79 AD – Pliny the Elder gives its Greek names and the name unedo.^[3][5]
• 1467 – A British deed uses it of the crab-apple tree.^[6]

Meanings

Noun

1. The strawberry tree, arbutus (Arbutus unedo).^[2][4]
2. (Medieval Latin) The crab-apple tree; also the poplar.^[6]

Word family

• arbuteus
• arbutum

Related words

• English arbutus

References

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