barbitos

Forms

barbitos m^[1] It is found almost only in the nominative, the accusative barbiton and the vocative barbite.^[2][3] Ovid makes it feminine once.^[2][4] Ausonius has a neuter plural barbita,^[2][5] and Martianus Capella a neuter barbiton.^[6]

Etymology

It is borrowed from Ancient Greek βάρβιτος (bárbitos, “lyre”).^[4][1][7] Köbler, following Frisk, calls the Greek word a foreign word of unknown origin.^[7]

Earliest recorded meaning

Lewis and Short find it only from the Augustan period.^[2] Horace addresses his lyre: age dīc Latīnum, barbite, carmen, “come, lyre, sing a Latin song”.^[2][5]

Semantic evolution

It names a lyre, properly one of lower pitch;^[4] Georges adds that it originally differed from the lyra by its deeper tone and greater number of strings but was often confused with it.^[5] It remained a word of poetry, used by Ovid, Statius, Claudian and Sidonius,^[2][6][5] and church Latin knew it as a lute or lyre.^[8]

Timeline

• 65–8 BC – Horace addresses his lyre as barbite.^[2][7]
• 43 BC–18 AD – Ovid uses it in the Heroides.^[2][7]
• c. 45–96 AD – Statius uses it in the Silvae.^[6][7]
• c. 310–394 AD – Ausonius uses the neuter plural barbita.^[2][7]

Meanings

Noun

1. A lyre, properly one of lower pitch; a lute.^[4][2][5]

References

1. ^ a b c d Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f g h i j Lewis, Charlton T.; Short, Charles (1879), A Latin Dictionary, Oxford: Clarendon Press
3. ^ Thesaurus linguae Latinae (1900–), Leipzig: Teubner; Berlin: De Gruyter; open-access ed., Munich: Bayerische Akademie der Wissenschaften
4. ^ a b c d Glare, P. G. W., ed. (2012), Oxford Latin Dictionary, 2nd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
5. ^ a b c d e Georges, Karl Ernst (1913–1918), Ausführliches lateinisch-deutsches Handwörterbuch, 8th ed., ed. Heinrich Georges, Hannover; Leipzig: Hahn
6. ^ a b c Conte, Gian Biagio; Pianezzola, Emilio; Ranucci, Giuliano (2010), il Latino: Vocabolario della lingua latina, 3rd ed., Florence: Le Monnier
7. ^ a b c d e f Köbler, Gerhard (2010), Lateinisches Abkunfts- und Wirkungswörterbuch für Altertum und Mittelalter, online ed., koeblergerhard.de
8. ^ Stelten, Leo F. (1995), Dictionary of Ecclesiastical Latin, Peabody, Mass.: Hendrickson