barathrum

Forms

barathrum n (genitive barathrī); second declension^[1]

Etymology

It is borrowed from Ancient Greek βάραθρον (bárathron, “gulf, pit”).^[2][3][1] Köbler connects the Greek word with Proto-Indo-European *gʷer- (“to swallow”).^[4]

Earliest recorded meaning

The TLL dates it from Plautus,^[5] in whom someone in despair cries “o abyss, where are you now?”^[2][3]

Semantic evolution

It is a pit, chasm or abyss:^[2][3] Virgil has the deepest whirlpool of an abyss, and Lucretius and Catullus also use it.^[2][3] It is especially the underworld, the pit.^[2][3] Plautus applies it humorously to a drinker's gullet: “quickly pour this into the abyss”.^[2] The TLL finds it rare in early prose but very common in the poets from Virgil on, often at the end of the hexameter.^[5] Döderlein calls it a poetic word of foreign origin for an abyss in water, beside vorāgō.^[6] Church Latin has it as the lower world, bottomless pit, abyss.^[7]

Timeline

• c. 250–184 BC – Plautus, of the abyss and of a gullet.^[2][5][4]
• 96–55 BC – Lucretius.^[3][4]
• 70–19 BC – Virgil, of an abyss in the sea.^[2][4]

Meanings

Noun

1. A pit, chasm, abyss.^[2][3][1]
2. The underworld, hell.^[2][3][1][7]
3. (humorous) The gullet, belly.^[2][1]

Related words

• vorāgō

References

1. ^ a b c d e f g Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k Glare, P. G. W., ed. (2012), Oxford Latin Dictionary, 2nd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
3. ^ a b c d e f g h Lewis, Charlton T.; Short, Charles (1879), A Latin Dictionary, Oxford: Clarendon Press
4. ^ a b c d Köbler, Gerhard (2010), Lateinisches Abkunfts- und Wirkungswörterbuch für Altertum und Mittelalter, online ed., koeblergerhard.de
5. ^ a b c Thesaurus linguae Latinae (1900–), Leipzig: Teubner; Berlin: De Gruyter; open-access ed., Munich: Bayerische Akademie der Wissenschaften
6. ^ Döderlein, Ludwig (1874), Döderlein’s Hand-book of Latin Synonymes, tr. H. H. Arnold, Andover: W. F. Draper
7. ^ a b Stelten, Leo F. (1995), Dictionary of Ecclesiastical Latin, Peabody, Mass.: Hendrickson