Etymologically
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barathrum

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Pronunciation

  • Classical: [ˈba.ra.tʰrũː][1]
  • Ecclesiastical: [ˈbaː.ra.trum][1]

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]

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