coctura

Forms

coctūra f (genitive coctūrae); first declension^[1]

Etymology

It is formed from Latin coquō + -ūra, from coquō (“to cook”).^[2][3][1]

Earliest recorded meaning

Vitruvius has it first,^[4] of the repeated heating (coctūrae crebrae) by which lumps of cinnabar are brought to their colour.^[2][3]

Semantic evolution

In the 1st century AD it was the usual word for the cooking of food and for a way of cooking: Celsus speaks of mushrooms made fit to eat by the method of cooking, and Pliny the Elder of cooking “in the style of Apicius”.^[2] It also meant the heating, roasting or smelting of ores and minerals, as in Seneca and Pliny,^[2] and, as a concrete noun, what is being boiled.^[2][5] Pliny used it figuratively of the warm weather that ripens fruit.^[2][6]

In medieval Latin it meant a decoction^[7] and was used for baking and the preparation of food, boiling salt, melting metals and, in medicine, cauterization.^[8][4] It lives on in Italian cottura, Romanian coptură and Sardinian cottura.^[1][3]

Timeline

• c. 84–c. 25 BC – Vitruvius uses it of heating cinnabar.^[2][4]
• 14–37 AD – Celsus uses it of cooking mushrooms.^[2][4]
• 4 BC–65 AD – Seneca uses it of smelting.^[2][4]
• 1st century AD – Columella uses it of the mixture being boiled.^[2][4]
• 23/24–79 AD – Pliny the Elder speaks of cooking in the style of Apicius and of the warmth that ripens fruit.^[2][4]

Meanings

Noun

1. Cooking of food; a way of cooking.^[2][9]
2. The heating, roasting or smelting of minerals and ores.^[2][5]
3. That which is being heated or boiled.^[2][5]
4. (figurative) Warm weather that ripens fruit.^[2][6]
5. (Medieval Latin) A decoction.^[7]
6. (Medieval Latin, medicine) Cauterization.^[8][4]

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 n o Glare, P. G. W., ed. (2012), Oxford Latin Dictionary, 2nd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
3. ^ a b c 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 Köbler, Gerhard (2010), Lateinisches Abkunfts- und Wirkungswörterbuch für Altertum und Mittelalter, online ed., koeblergerhard.de
5. ^ a b c Georges, Karl Ernst (1913–1918), Ausführliches lateinisch-deutsches Handwörterbuch, 8th ed., ed. Heinrich Georges, Hannover; Leipzig: Hahn
6. ^ a b Gaffiot, Félix (2016), Dictionnaire latin-français, new ed. by Gérard Gréco et al. (Gaffiot 2016), online ed.
7. ^ a b Niermeyer, J. F. (1976), Mediae Latinitatis Lexicon Minus, Leiden: Brill
8. ^ a b Mittellateinisches Wörterbuch bis zum ausgehenden 13. Jahrhundert (1967–), Munich: C. H. Beck; Bayerische Akademie der Wissenschaften
9. ^ Lewis, Charlton T.; Short, Charles (1879), A Latin Dictionary, Oxford: Clarendon Press