chiragra

Forms

chīrā̆gra f (genitive chīrā̆grae); first declension^[1] The poets use the form cheragra (Horace, Persius, Martial), which the OLD, Gaffiot and the TLL take as their headword; the TLL finds it in the better manuscripts of Celsus, Seneca and Pliny as well, and chīragra in the later ones.^[2][3][4][5] Medieval spellings include ciragra, cyragra and cirogra.^[6][7]

Etymology

It is borrowed from Ancient Greek χειράγρα (kheirágra, “gout in the hand”),^[3][1][8][7] a compound of χείρ (kheír, “hand”) and ἄγρα (ágra, “seizing, catching”).^[1][7]

Earliest recorded meaning

Its first recorded use is in Horace,^[2][7] who speaks of a well-deserved cheragra that crushed someone's joints, and calls it nōdōsa, “knotty”, in the Epistles.^[2][4]

Semantic evolution

In Classical Latin it is the medical name for gout or arthritis of the hands, used by Celsus, Seneca, Pliny the Elder and Marcellus Empiricus, often beside podagra: Seneca writes that gout of the feet and hands and every pain of the joints have intervals of rest.^[2][5] Persius and Martial use it in their poems, and Martial jokes of someone who hands his patron nothing: haec chīragra est, “that is chiragra”.^[2][5]

Medieval medical writers kept it as the name of a disease of the finger joints,^[6] and Bartholomaeus Anglicus explains that cirogra is in the hands what podagra is in the feet.^[6] From it came the adjective chiragricus, suffering from gout in the hands.^[2]

Timeline

• 65–8 BC – Horace uses the form cheragra in the Satires and Epistles.^[2][7]
• 14–37 AD – Celsus uses it as a medical term.^[2][5][7]
• 4 BC–65 AD – Seneca names it beside podagra in his letters.^[2][5][7]
• 34–62 AD – Persius uses it in his satires.^[2][7]
• 40–102/103 AD – Martial uses it in a joke.^[2][7]
• c. 383–419/420 AD – Jerome uses it.^[2][7]

Meanings

Noun

1. Gout or arthritis in the hands.^[3][5][2]

Related words

• podagra
• chiragricus

Usage notes

A medieval writer quoted by the DMLBS derives ciragra from ciros, “hand”, and gradior, “to step”.^[6]

References

1. ^ a b c d e Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m Thesaurus linguae Latinae (1900–), Leipzig: Teubner; Berlin: De Gruyter; open-access ed., Munich: Bayerische Akademie der Wissenschaften
3. ^ a b c Glare, P. G. W., ed. (2012), Oxford Latin Dictionary, 2nd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
4. ^ a b Gaffiot, Félix (2016), Dictionnaire latin-français, new ed. by Gérard Gréco et al. (Gaffiot 2016), online ed.
5. ^ a b c d e f Lewis, Charlton T.; Short, Charles (1879), A Latin Dictionary, Oxford: Clarendon Press
6. ^ a b c d Latham, R. E., D. R. Howlett, R. K. Ashdowne, et al. (1975–2013), Dictionary of Medieval Latin from British Sources, London: British Academy / Oxford University Press
7. ^ a b c d e f g h i j Köbler, Gerhard (2010), Lateinisches Abkunfts- und Wirkungswörterbuch für Altertum und Mittelalter, online ed., koeblergerhard.de
8. ^ Saalfeld, Günther Alexander (1874), Index Graecorum vocabulorum in linguam latinam translatorum, Berlin: Weidmann