asellus
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Forms
asellus m (genitive asellī); second declension[1]
Etymology
It is a diminutive of asinus “ass” with the suffix ⟨-ellus⟩.[2][1][3]
Earliest recorded meaning
Köbler's first source is Plautus, whom he dates c. 250–184 BC.[4] The OLD's earliest citation is from Varro, of a donkey.[2]
Semantic evolution
It meant a little ass, a donkey, a pack ass, as Varro's asellus dossuārius, and Cicero's asellus onustus aurō “an ass laden with gold”.[2][3] In Pliny the Asellī were two stars in Cancer.[2] In Varro it was also a fish of the cod family, probably the hake.[2][5] Asellus was also a Roman cognomen, and Cicero reports a joke of Scipio Aemilianus on it.[6][5]
In Ecclesiastical Latin it meant a donkey, a young ass.[7] It survives in Italian asello, and Köbler derives Germanic *asilu- from it.[1][4]
Timeline
- c. 250–184 BC – Plautus has the word.[4]
- 116–27 BC – Varro uses it of a pack ass and of a fish.[2][4]
- 81–43 BC – Cicero quotes the ass laden with gold.[3][4]
- 23/24–79 AD – Pliny uses it of two stars.[2][4]
Meanings
Noun
Word family
- asella
- asellio
- asellulus
Related words
References
- ^ a b c Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
- ^ a b c d e f g h i j Glare, P. G. W., ed. (2012), Oxford Latin Dictionary, 2nd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
- ^ a b c Lewis, Charlton T.; Short, Charles (1879), A Latin Dictionary, Oxford: Clarendon Press
- ^ a b c d e f Köbler, Gerhard (2010), Lateinisches Abkunfts- und Wirkungswörterbuch für Altertum und Mittelalter, online ed., koeblergerhard.de
- ^ a b Gaffiot, Félix (2016), Dictionnaire latin-français, new ed. by Gérard Gréco et al. (Gaffiot 2016), online ed.
- ^ Thesaurus linguae Latinae (1900–), Leipzig: Teubner; Berlin: De Gruyter; open-access ed., Munich: Bayerische Akademie der Wissenschaften
- ^ Stelten, Leo F. (1995), Dictionary of Ecclesiastical Latin, Peabody, Mass.: Hendrickson