balatus

Forms

bālātus m (genitive bālātūs); fourth declension^[1]

Etymology

It is from Latin bālō (“to bleat”) + -tus, an action noun of the fourth declension.^[2][1][3] De Vaan treats bālō as imitative: the rendering of a sheep's bleating wavers between ⟨ā⟩ and ⟨ē⟩ in the Indo-European languages, and the suffix ⟨-lāre⟩ was probably taken over from ululō (“to howl”).^[4]

Earliest recorded meaning

Lewis and Short cite it first in Lucretius, of the bleating of sheep,^[5][6] and Köbler dates it from Virgil.^[6]

Semantic evolution

It is the bleating of sheep, and of goats:^[2][5][7] Virgil has lambs that keep up their bleating in the Aeneid and uses it in the Georgics,^[5][7] and Ovid, Statius and Pliny the Elder use it too, Pliny of goats.^[5][7] The plural appears in Ovid and in later writers such as Solinus and Jerome.^[7] Petronius has the phrase balatum ducere for drawing a bleat out of someone, that is, striking them in the face.^[7][8]

British medieval writers use it also of lowing and of the howling of dogs.^[9] It continues in Italian belato.^[8]

Timeline

• 96–55 BC – Lucretius uses it of the bleating of sheep.^[5][6]
• 70–19 BC – Virgil uses it of bleating lambs.^[5][6]
• before 66 AD – Petronius uses the phrase balatum ducere.^[7][6]
• 23/24–79 AD – Pliny the Elder uses it of goats.^[5][6]

Meanings

Noun

1. A bleat, bleating, especially of sheep, also of goats.^[2][5][7]
2. (Medieval Latin) lowing; howling.^[9]

Related words

• bālō

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. ^ Thesaurus linguae Latinae (1900–), Leipzig: Teubner; Berlin: De Gruyter; open-access ed., Munich: Bayerische Akademie der Wissenschaften
4. ^ de Vaan, Michiel (2008), Etymological Dictionary of Latin and the other Italic Languages, Leiden Indo-European Etymological Dictionary Series 7, Leiden; Boston: Brill
5. ^ a b c d e f g h Lewis, Charlton T.; Short, Charles (1879), A Latin Dictionary, Oxford: Clarendon Press
6. ^ a b c d e f Köbler, Gerhard (2010), Lateinisches Abkunfts- und Wirkungswörterbuch für Altertum und Mittelalter, online ed., koeblergerhard.de
7. ^ a b c d e f g Georges, Karl Ernst (1913–1918), Ausführliches lateinisch-deutsches Handwörterbuch, 8th ed., ed. Heinrich Georges, Hannover; Leipzig: Hahn
8. ^ a b Conte, Gian Biagio; Pianezzola, Emilio; Ranucci, Giuliano (2010), il Latino: Vocabolario della lingua latina, 3rd ed., Florence: Le Monnier
9. ^ a b 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