armarium

Forms

armārium n (genitive armāriī or armārī); second declension^[1]

Etymology

It is from Latin arma (“tools, equipment, arms”) + -ārium.^[2][1][3] A grammarian, followed by Isidore, defines it as the place where the tools of any trade are kept.^[3]

Earliest recorded meaning

Plautus uses it first,^[4] as when a character in the Epidicus says he takes as much silver as he likes from a locked and sealed cupboard.^[2]

Semantic evolution

It is a cupboard or chest for food, clothes or money: Cato has a store cupboard, Plautus opens one, and Cicero tells of a cupboard in the house holding a sum of money and gold.^[5][2] It is also a bookcase,^[2] and Gellius uses it of the box set with spikes in which Regulus was put to death.^[5] An inscription uses it of a two-storeyed tomb.^[2] In Medieval Latin it means an archive and an armoury,^[6] and Stelten gives "locker, closet, vault".^[7] Through Old French it is the source of the English armoire.^[8]

Timeline

• c. 250–184 BC – Plautus of a locked cupboard.^[2][4]
• 234–149 BC – Cato of a store cupboard.^[5]
• 81–43 BC – Cicero of a cupboard holding money.^[5]
• c. 165 AD – Gellius of the spiked box of Regulus.^[5]
• 1570s – The English armoire is borrowed from French.^[8]

Meanings

Noun

1. A cupboard, closet, chest (for food, clothes or money); a bookcase.^[2][5][1]
2. A tomb, sepulchral monument.^[2]
3. (Medieval Latin) An archive; an armoury.^[6]

Word family

• armariolum

Related words

• arma
• armāmentārium
• English armoire

References

1. ^ a b c d e Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f g h Glare, P. G. W., ed. (2012), Oxford Latin Dictionary, 2nd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
3. ^ a b Thesaurus linguae Latinae (1900–), Leipzig: Teubner; Berlin: De Gruyter; open-access ed., Munich: Bayerische Akademie der Wissenschaften
4. ^ a b Köbler, Gerhard (2010), Lateinisches Abkunfts- und Wirkungswörterbuch für Altertum und Mittelalter, online ed., koeblergerhard.de
5. ^ a b c d e f Lewis, Charlton T.; Short, Charles (1879), A Latin Dictionary, Oxford: Clarendon Press
6. ^ a b Niermeyer, J. F. (1976), Mediae Latinitatis Lexicon Minus, Leiden: Brill
7. ^ Stelten, Leo F. (1995), Dictionary of Ecclesiastical Latin, Peabody, Mass.: Hendrickson
8. ^ a b Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com