capreolus

Forms

capreolus m (genitive capreolī); second declension^[1]

Etymology

It is from Latin caprea (“roe deer”) + -olus.^[2][1] The TLL compares caper (“goat”) and caprea;^[3] Priscian thought it was formed from a nominative ⟨capreus⟩.^[3][4]

Earliest recorded meaning

Köbler's first source is Caesar,^[5] who in the Civil War describes small posts joined to one another by rafters with a gentle slope.^[2]

Semantic evolution

Its first sense is the young of the roe deer, or the roe deer itself, as in Virgil's Eclogues, where two young roes still have white-spotted skins.^[2][4] By likeness to the animal's forked horns it named things that branch or bend: a rafter or strut in a building or a machine,^[2][4] the tendril of a vine, which Varro explains as a twisted shoot,^[2] and a two-pronged tool for loosening the earth in Columella.^[2][4]

In Medieval Latin it was a roebuck, and also a he-goat.^[6] Glossaries spell it ⟨capriolus⟩ and ⟨caprolus⟩,^[3] and it survives as Italian capriolo.^[3]

Timeline

• c. 50 BC – Caesar uses it of rafters in the Civil War.^[2][5]
• 116–27 BC – Varro uses it of a vine tendril.^[2][5]
• 70–19 BC – Virgil uses it of young roe deer.^[2][5]
• 1st century AD – Columella uses it of a two-pronged weeding tool.^[2][4][5]

Meanings

Noun

1. The young of the roe deer; a roe deer.^[2][4][1]
2. A rafter, strut or support.^[2][4]
3. The tendril of a vine.^[2]
4. A two-pronged weeding fork or hoe.^[2][4]
5. (Medieval Latin) A roebuck; a he-goat.^[6]

Word family

• capreolatim

References

1. ^ a b c Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n 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 Lewis, Charlton T.; Short, Charles (1879), A Latin Dictionary, Oxford: Clarendon Press
5. ^ a b c d e Köbler, Gerhard (2010), Lateinisches Abkunfts- und Wirkungswörterbuch für Altertum und Mittelalter, online ed., koeblergerhard.de
6. ^ a b Niermeyer, J. F. (1976), Mediae Latinitatis Lexicon Minus, Leiden: Brill