cornucopia

Forms

cornūcōpia f (genitive cornūcōpiae); first declension^[1]

Etymology

It is from Latin cornū (“horn”) + cōpia (“abundance, plenty”), the phrase ⟨cornū cōpiae⟩ “horn of plenty”, with the genitive of cōpia, written as one word.^[2][3] Lewis and Short call the one-word spelling less correct, though frequent in Late Latin.^[2]

Earliest recorded meaning

It first appears, as two words, in Plautus, whose Pseudolus calls a letter that has just arrived a cornu copiae holding everything the speaker wants.^[4][5]

Semantic evolution

The horn of plenty was the horn of the goat Amalthea, set among the stars, which the Greeks called κέρας Ἀμαλθείας; it was the emblem of fruitfulness and abundance.^[2] The OLD describes it as a magic horn that supplied whatever its owner wished for, and a hollowed horn of this kind was carried as the emblem of certain deities.^[4] Pliny the Elder explains the Greek κέρας Ἀμαλθείας as meaning copiae cornu.^[4]

The spelling as one word, cornūcōpiae and twice cornūcōpia in Ammianus Marcellinus, belongs to later Latin.^[2][6] In Ecclesiastical Latin it remained the emblem of abundance,^[7] and in British Medieval Latin it named the horn of plenty and also a book.^[8] English borrowed it in the 1590s,^[3] and Italian, Spanish and Portuguese also took it over.^[1]

Timeline

• c. 250–184 BC – Plautus uses cornu copiae of a letter that brings all the speaker wants.^[4][5]
• 23/24–79 AD – Pliny the Elder renders the Greek κέρας Ἀμαλθείας as cornu copiae.^[4][5]
• c. 165 AD – Aulus Gellius uses the phrase.^[4][5]
• c. 390 AD – Ammianus Marcellinus writes cornūcōpia as one word.^[2][6][5]
• 1508 – An inventory of Canterbury College, Oxford, lists a book called Cornucopia.^[8]
• 1590s – English borrows it as cornucopia.^[3]

Meanings

Noun

1. The horn of plenty, the horn of the goat Amalthea, an emblem of abundance.^[2][4][7]
2. (Medieval Latin) The title of a book.^[8]

Related words

• cornu
• copia
• English cornucopia

Usage notes

Classical authors write cornu copiae as two words;^[9][2] Gaffiot prefers that spelling to cornucopia.^[9][2]

References

1. ^ a b c d Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f g h Lewis, Charlton T.; Short, Charles (1879), A Latin Dictionary, Oxford: Clarendon Press
3. ^ a b c Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
4. ^ a b c d e f g Glare, P. G. W., ed. (2012), Oxford Latin Dictionary, 2nd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
5. ^ a b c d e Köbler, Gerhard (2010), Lateinisches Abkunfts- und Wirkungswörterbuch für Altertum und Mittelalter, online ed., koeblergerhard.de
6. ^ a b Conte, Gian Biagio; Pianezzola, Emilio; Ranucci, Giuliano (2010), il Latino: Vocabolario della lingua latina, 3rd ed., Florence: Le Monnier
7. ^ a b Stelten, Leo F. (1995), Dictionary of Ecclesiastical Latin, Peabody, Mass.: Hendrickson
8. ^ a b c 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
9. ^ a b Gaffiot, Félix (2016), Dictionnaire latin-français, new ed. by Gérard Gréco et al. (Gaffiot 2016), online ed.