cloaca

Forms

cloāca f (genitive cloācae); first declension^[1] Varro and inscriptions have clouāca, and cluāca also occurs.^[2][3]

Etymology

It is from Proto-Italic *klowā- (“to clean”), a verb that de Vaan, following Vine, derives from an adjective Proto-Indo-European *ḱleuH-o- (“clear, clean”); the verb may survive in cloō (“to purify”), a gloss in Servius whose reliability is often doubted.^[3] Cognate with Welsh clir (“clean”), Ancient Greek κλύζω (klúzō, “to wash”) and Lithuanian šlúoti (“to sweep”).^[3] The OLD derives it from cluō (“to cleanse”),^[2] a verb that Walde–Hofmann and Rix think Pliny may have invented to explain the name Cluācīna.^[3] Wiktionary calls the derivation uncertain.^[1] Festus said the sewers were named from washing, and Isidore because water drains through them.^[4]

Earliest recorded meaning

De Vaan dates it from Plautus,^[3] in whom a drunken woman's gullet is meant: “quickly pour this into the abyss, swiftly flush the sewer”.^[2][5]

Semantic evolution

It is an underground drain or sewer.^[2] Lewis & Short describe the great sewer of Rome, which they ascribe to Tarquinius Priscus, carrying filth from the streets into the Tiber;^[5] Livy and Pliny the Elder describe it.^[5] Cicero has the proverb arcem facere e cloācā, “to make a citadel out of a sewer”, that is, to make much of little.^[2][5] Plautus and Varro apply it humorously to the stomach or bowels of a glutton.^[2][5] Venus was worshipped as Cloācīna, perhaps “the purifier”.^[3] Church Latin has it as sewer, drain.^[6] In New Latin it became the anatomical term for the common opening of the intestinal and urogenital tracts.^[1] English took cloaca in the 1650s as a euphemism for a sewer.^[7]

Timeline

• c. 250–184 BC – Plautus, of a drunken woman's gullet.^[2][3][8]
• 116–27 BC – Varro, of the bowels, in the form clouāca.^[2][3][8]
• 81–43 BC – Cicero, of sewers and in a proverb.^[2][5][8]
• 1650s – Borrowed into English as cloaca.^[7]

Meanings

Noun

1. An underground drain, sewer.^[2][5][1]
2. (humorous) The stomach or bowels of a glutton or drunkard.^[2][5][1]
3. (New Latin, anatomy) The cloaca.^[1]

Word family

• cloācālis
• cloācārium
• cloacula

Related words

• cluō
• English cloaca

References

1. ^ a b c d e f g h Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k Glare, P. G. W., ed. (2012), Oxford Latin Dictionary, 2nd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
3. ^ a b c d e f g h de Vaan, Michiel (2008), Etymological Dictionary of Latin and the other Italic Languages, Leiden Indo-European Etymological Dictionary Series 7, Leiden; Boston: Brill
4. ^ Thesaurus linguae Latinae (1900–), Leipzig: Teubner; Berlin: De Gruyter; open-access ed., Munich: Bayerische Akademie der Wissenschaften
5. ^ a b c d e f g h Lewis, Charlton T.; Short, Charles (1879), A Latin Dictionary, Oxford: Clarendon Press
6. ^ Stelten, Leo F. (1995), Dictionary of Ecclesiastical Latin, Peabody, Mass.: Hendrickson
7. ^ a b Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
8. ^ a b c Köbler, Gerhard (2010), Lateinisches Abkunfts- und Wirkungswörterbuch für Altertum und Mittelalter, online ed., koeblergerhard.de