Etymologically
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capreolus

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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