burrus

Forms

burrus (feminine burra, neuter burrum); first/second-declension adjective^[1] Also spelled byrrus and birrus.^[2][3][4]

Etymology

It is borrowed from Ancient Greek πυρρός (purrhós, “flame-coloured, red”),^[5][3][1] from πῦρ (pûr, “fire”).^[1][6] Ennius likewise wrote ⟨Burrus⟩ for the name ⟨Pyrrhus⟩, as Cicero notes.^[4][7]

Earliest recorded meaning

Festus (in Paul's epitome) records it as an old word: burrum dīcēbant antīquī, quod nunc dīcimus rūfum, “the ancients said burrus for what we now call rūfus (red)”, adding that a man flushed from food and drink was called burrus.^[3][7][4]

Semantic evolution

Servius explains the name Pyrrhus from the colour of his hair, “which in Latin is called burrus”.^[3][4][8] The glossaries render it rūfus and sometimes niger, “dark”,^[3] and Conte compares Italian buio (“dark”).^[8] It survived as the cognomen Burrus, borne by Afranius Burrus, Nero's tutor.^[5][7]

Meanings

Adjective

1. red, reddish (rūfus), of hair.^[2][4][5][1]
2. Red in the face, flushed (after eating and drinking).^[7][1]

Word family

• burricus
• burra

Related words

• rūfus

References

1. ^ a b c d e f g Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b Lewis, Charlton T.; Short, Charles (1879), A Latin Dictionary, Oxford: Clarendon Press
3. ^ a b c d e Thesaurus linguae Latinae (1900–), Leipzig: Teubner; Berlin: De Gruyter; open-access ed., Munich: Bayerische Akademie der Wissenschaften
4. ^ a b c d e Georges, Karl Ernst (1913–1918), Ausführliches lateinisch-deutsches Handwörterbuch, 8th ed., ed. Heinrich Georges, Hannover; Leipzig: Hahn
5. ^ a b c Glare, P. G. W., ed. (2012), Oxford Latin Dictionary, 2nd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
6. ^ Köbler, Gerhard (2010), Lateinisches Abkunfts- und Wirkungswörterbuch für Altertum und Mittelalter, online ed., koeblergerhard.de
7. ^ a b c d Gaffiot, Félix (2016), Dictionnaire latin-français, new ed. by Gérard Gréco et al. (Gaffiot 2016), online ed.
8. ^ a b Conte, Gian Biagio; Pianezzola, Emilio; Ranucci, Giuliano (2010), il Latino: Vocabolario della lingua latina, 3rd ed., Florence: Le Monnier