callosus

Forms

callōsus (feminine callōsa, neuter callōsum); first/second-declension adjective^[1]

Etymology

It is from Latin callum (“hard skin”) + -ōsus.^[2][1][3] De Vaan reconstructs the noun as Proto-Italic *kaln/so- (“hard”) and calls its Indo-European origin uncertain; he compares Old Irish calath (“hard”) and Welsh caled (“hard”).^[4]

Earliest recorded meaning

Lewis and Short say it is not found before the Augustan age.^[5] The OLD's first example is in Horace's Satires: the eggs with a tough shell hold a male yolk, marem cohibent callōsa vitellum.^[2]

Semantic evolution

It means hard-skinned or tough: Columella has a vine with thick-skinned grapes, Pliny the Elder the tough gizzard of birds, and Apuleius a boar with thick hide.^[2] Seneca uses it of knees and hands hardened by use, and of a palate so hardened that nothing is too hot for it.^[2] In medicine it means callous or hardened, of the edges of ulcers in Celsus and of old ulcers in Scribonius Largus.^[2][5] The TLL finds the comparative in Celsus, Pliny and Apicius, and the superlative in Soranus.^[6]

English callous comes from it, first recorded about 1400 in the physical sense; the figurative sense, unfeeling, appears by the 1670s.^[3]

Timeline

• 65–8 BC – Horace uses it of eggs with a tough shell.^[2][7]
• 14–37 AD – Celsus uses it of the hardened edges of ulcers.^[2][7]
• 4 BC–65 AD – Seneca uses it of hands and knees hardened by use.^[2][7]
• c. 47 AD – Scribonius Largus uses it of old callous ulcers.^[2][7]
• c. 1400 – English callous is borrowed from it.^[3]

Meanings

Adjective

1. Hard-skinned, thick-skinned, tough.^[2][5]
2. Made hard or tough by use.^[2]
3. (medicine) Callous, hardened.^[2][5]

Word family

• callōsitās

Related words

• callum
• calleō
• English callous

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 k l Glare, P. G. W., ed. (2012), Oxford Latin Dictionary, 2nd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
3. ^ a b c Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
4. ^ de Vaan, Michiel (2008), Etymological Dictionary of Latin and the other Italic Languages, Leiden Indo-European Etymological Dictionary Series 7, Leiden; Boston: Brill
5. ^ a b c d Lewis, Charlton T.; Short, Charles (1879), A Latin Dictionary, Oxford: Clarendon Press
6. ^ Thesaurus linguae Latinae (1900–), Leipzig: Teubner; Berlin: De Gruyter; open-access ed., Munich: Bayerische Akademie der Wissenschaften
7. ^ a b c d Köbler, Gerhard (2010), Lateinisches Abkunfts- und Wirkungswörterbuch für Altertum und Mittelalter, online ed., koeblergerhard.de