Etymologically
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cloaca

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Pronunciation

  • Classical: [kɫoˈaː.ka], [kɫoˈaː.kaː][1]
  • Ecclesiastical: [kloˈaː.ka], [kloˈaː.ka][1]

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
  • 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