bracae

Forms

brācae f pl (genitive brācārum); first declension^[1] The singular brāca is rare (Ovid).^[2][3][4] Manuscripts also have the spellings braccae, brachae and bragae.^[4] Lewis and Short note an accessory form brācēs in Diocletian's edict.^[3][4]

Etymology

It is a word of Gaulish origin;^[2][4] the TLL notes that Diodorus already calls it Gaulish.^[4] According to Wiktionary, it is borrowed from Gaulish *brāca, probably Transalpine Gaulish and perhaps itself from Proto-Germanic *brōks (“rump, hindquarters, leggings, trousers”).^[1] The TLL compares Old High German bruoh,^[4] and Lewis and Short Dutch broek and the English word breeches.^[3]

Isidore of Seville derived it from brevis (“short”), because the garment is short and covers the private parts.^[4][5]

Earliest recorded meaning

It is first found in Lucilius, meaning trousers.^[6][7]

Semantic evolution

The word named long, loose trousers or breeches,^[2][3][8] at first worn only by barbarians, not by Greeks or Romans: Virgil calls them barbara tegmina crurum, “barbarian coverings of the legs”.^[3] In the time of the emperors Romans wore them too.^[3] Ovid has the rare singular,^[2][4] Propertius speaks of striped trousers, and Tacitus of someone dressed in them.^[3] The Theodosian Code and the Historia Augusta still mention them.^[3]

Timeline

• c. 180–102 BC – Lucilius uses the word.^[6][7]
• 70–19 BC – Virgil calls them barbarian coverings of the legs.^[3][7]
• 43 BC–18 AD – Ovid uses the singular brāca.^[2][4][7]
• 98–115 AD – Tacitus has bracas indutus, “dressed in trousers”.^[3][7]
• 438 AD – The Theodosian Code mentions them.^[3][4][7]
• c. 560–636 AD – Isidore of Seville derives the word from brevis.^[4][7]

Meanings

Noun

1. (plural only) Trousers, breeches.^[2][3][8]

Related words

• English breeches

References

1. ^ a b Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f Glare, P. G. W., ed. (2012), Oxford Latin Dictionary, 2nd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
3. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l Lewis, Charlton T.; Short, Charles (1879), A Latin Dictionary, Oxford: Clarendon Press
4. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k Thesaurus linguae Latinae (1900–), Leipzig: Teubner; Berlin: De Gruyter; open-access ed., Munich: Bayerische Akademie der Wissenschaften
5. ^ Isidore of Seville, Etymologiarum sive Originum libri XX, ed. W. M. Lindsay (Oxford, 1911).
6. ^ a b 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 g Köbler, Gerhard (2010), Lateinisches Abkunfts- und Wirkungswörterbuch für Altertum und Mittelalter, online ed., koeblergerhard.de
8. ^ a b Georges, Karl Ernst (1913–1918), Ausführliches lateinisch-deutsches Handwörterbuch, 8th ed., ed. Heinrich Georges, Hannover; Leipzig: Hahn