carabus

Forms

cārabus m (genitive cārabī); second declension^[1]

Etymology

It is borrowed from Ancient Greek κάραβος (kárabos, “a prickly crustacean; a horned beetle”).^[2][3][1] In Greek the word already named a light canoe by metaphor.^[4] Beekes considers the source Pre-Greek.^[4]

Earliest recorded meaning

Pliny the Elder (23/24–79 AD) is the first to use it,^[5] of a kind of sea crayfish or crab.^[2][3]

Semantic evolution

The OLD records only the crustacean.^[2] Isidore of Seville uses it for a small boat, describing it as “parva scapha ex vimine facta” (“a small skiff made of wickerwork”), covered with raw hide;^[3][6] glossaries list it among small boats.^[6] Medieval Latin kept the sense of a barque or canoe.^[7]

Timeline

• 23/24–79 AD – Pliny the Elder names the crustacean.^[2][5]
• c. 560–636 AD – Isidore of Seville describes the wicker boat.^[3][6][5]

Meanings

Noun

1. A crustacean, a sea crayfish.^[2][3]
2. (Late Latin) A small wicker boat covered with hide.^[3][8]
3. (Medieval Latin) A barque, a canoe.^[7]

References

1. ^ a b Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e Glare, P. G. W., ed. (2012), Oxford Latin Dictionary, 2nd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
3. ^ a b c d e f Lewis, Charlton T.; Short, Charles (1879), A Latin Dictionary, Oxford: Clarendon Press
4. ^ a b Beekes, Robert S. P. (2010), Etymological Dictionary of Greek, with the assistance of Lucien van Beek, Leiden Indo-European Etymological Dictionary Series 10, Leiden; Boston: Brill
5. ^ a b c 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
7. ^ a b Niermeyer, J. F. (1976), Mediae Latinitatis Lexicon Minus, Leiden: Brill
8. ^ Gaffiot, Félix (2016), Dictionnaire latin-français, new ed. by Gérard Gréco et al. (Gaffiot 2016), online ed.