bicolor

Pronunciation

• Classical: [ˈbɪ.kɔ.ɫɔr]^[1]
• Ecclesiastical: [ˈbiː.ko.lor]^[1]

Forms

bicolor (genitive bicolōris); third-declension one-termination adjective^[1]

Etymology

It is from Latin bi- + color (“colour”).^[2][3][1]

Earliest recorded meaning

It is first found in Virgil's Aeneid, of a horse: quem Thracius albis portat equus bicolor maculis, “whom a two-coloured Thracian horse with white spots carries”.^[3][4]

Semantic evolution

Lewis and Short call it poetic or found in prose after Augustus.^[4] Ovid uses it of a berry green and black, and of the myrtle;^[4] Pliny the Elder also has it.^[4] Late Latin had a variant bicolorus, in Vopiscus' life of Aurelian.^[4] Glossaries equate it with Greek words for “two-coloured”.^[3]

Timeline

• 70–19 BC – Virgil uses it of a two-coloured horse.^[3][4][5]
• 43 BC–18 AD – Ovid uses it of berries and of the myrtle.^[4][5]
• 23/24–79 AD – Pliny the Elder uses it in his Natural History.^[4][5]

Meanings

Adjective

1. Of two colours, two-coloured.^[2][4][6]

References

1. ^ a b c d Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b Glare, P. G. W., ed. (2012), Oxford Latin Dictionary, 2nd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
3. ^ a b c d Thesaurus linguae Latinae (1900–), Leipzig: Teubner; Berlin: De Gruyter; open-access ed., Munich: Bayerische Akademie der Wissenschaften
4. ^ a b c d e f g h i Lewis, Charlton T.; Short, Charles (1879), A Latin Dictionary, Oxford: Clarendon Press
5. ^ a b c Köbler, Gerhard (2010), Lateinisches Abkunfts- und Wirkungswörterbuch für Altertum und Mittelalter, online ed., koeblergerhard.de
6. ^ Stelten, Leo F. (1995), Dictionary of Ecclesiastical Latin, Peabody, Mass.: Hendrickson