capra

Forms

capra f (genitive caprae, masculine caper); first declension^[1]

Etymology

It is the feminine of caper (“he-goat”).^[2][1][3] De Vaan traces caper to Proto-Italic *kapro- (“he-goat”), with cognates in Umbrian kaprum (“he-goat”), Ancient Greek κάπρος (kápros, “wild boar”) and Old Norse hafr (“he-goat”); since no single Proto-Indo-European word for “goat” can be reconstructed and ⟨*kap-⟩ is close to Celtic ⟨*gab-ro-⟩, he thinks a loanword more likely than a root ⟨*kh₂p-⟩.^[4]

Earliest recorded meaning

Plautus has it first:^[5][4] in the Mercator a man dreams that he has bought a beautiful she-goat.^[2]

Semantic evolution

It is the she-goat, in the farming writers Varro and Columella, in Pliny the Elder and in Cicero.^[3] Cicero reports that wild goats in Crete, hit by poisoned arrows, look for the herb dittany, which makes the arrows fall out.^[6] Virgil uses it of wild goats.^[3] Suetonius records it as a nickname for a man with bristly hair.^[3] Caprae palus, the Goat's Marsh, was part of the Campus Martius where, in Livy, Romulus held an assembly to review the army.^[2][6] Ennius uses it for the star Capella in Auriga, and Seneca reports that Aristotle called a kind of meteor “the goat”.^[2] Wiktionary also gives the sense “the smell of the armpits”.^[1]

Timeline

• c. 250–184 BC – Plautus, of a she-goat in a dream.^[2][5]
• 204–169 BC – Ennius, of the star Capella.^[2][5]
• 81–43 BC – Cicero, of the wild goats of Crete.^[6][3][5]
• 59 BC–17 AD – Livy, of the Goat's Marsh.^[2][5]
• 4 BC–65 AD – Seneca, of a meteor called “the goat”.^[2][5]

Meanings

Noun

1. A she-goat, nanny goat.^[2][3][1]
2. Caprae palus: a place in the Campus Martius.^[2]
3. The star Capella in Auriga.^[2][3]
4. A kind of meteor.^[2]
5. The smell of the armpits.^[1]

Word family

• capella¹
• caprārius
• caprimulgus
• rūpicapra

Related words

• caper
• caprea
• caprīnus
• haedus

References

1. ^ a b c d e f g 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 d e f g Lewis, Charlton T.; Short, Charles (1879), A Latin Dictionary, Oxford: Clarendon Press
4. ^ a b 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 e f Köbler, Gerhard (2010), Lateinisches Abkunfts- und Wirkungswörterbuch für Altertum und Mittelalter, online ed., koeblergerhard.de
6. ^ a b c Thesaurus linguae Latinae (1900–), Leipzig: Teubner; Berlin: De Gruyter; open-access ed., Munich: Bayerische Akademie der Wissenschaften