crassitudo

Forms

crassitūdō f (genitive crassitūdinis); third declension^[1]

Etymology

It is from Latin crassus (“thick”) + -tūdō.^[2][3][1] The origin of the adjective is unclear: de Vaan rejects the older derivation from a root meaning to wind and notes that it belongs to a group of pejorative adjectives for human shapes with a double consonant.^[4]

Earliest recorded meaning

Plautus has it first,^[4][5] in the Mostellaria: specta postis … quanta firmitate facti et quanta crassitudine, look at the doorposts, how firmly made and how thick.^[2][3]

Semantic evolution

It is thickness as a measurement:^[2] Caesar gives the thickness of walls as five feet, and Vitruvius the thickness of columns.^[2][6] It is also great thickness, and of liquids consistency or density: Cato wants a mixture as thick as a plaster, Cicero speaks of the density of the air, and Cato also uses it of rich soil.^[2] Concretely it is a thickness of masonry, a swelling on the body and a sediment, all three in Vitruvius or Pliny the Elder.^[2] The TLL finds it often in Vitruvius, Celsus, Columella and Pliny.^[3]

Church Latin uses it for thickness, fatness, density, sediment and a clod.^[7]

Timeline

• c. 250–184 BC – Plautus, of thick doorposts.^[2][3][5]
• 234–149 BC – Cato, of the consistency of a mixture and of rich soil.^[2][5]
• 81–43 BC – Cicero, of the density of the air.^[2][5]
• c. 50 BC – Caesar, of the thickness of walls.^[2][6][5]

Meanings

Noun

1. thickness (as a measurement).^[2][6][1]
2. Great thickness.^[2]
3. Consistency, density (of liquids, air); richness (of soil).^[2][6][1]
4. A thickness of masonry.^[2]
5. A swelling on the body.^[2]
6. sediment, dregs.^[2][6][1]

Related words

• crassus

Usage notes

An ancient grammarian notes that all nouns in -tūdō are derived, feminine and of the third declension, adding -tūdō to the genitive of the adjective, as rectus, rectī, rectitūdō.^[3]

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 p Glare, P. G. W., ed. (2012), Oxford Latin Dictionary, 2nd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
3. ^ a b c d e Thesaurus linguae Latinae (1900–), Leipzig: Teubner; Berlin: De Gruyter; open-access ed., Munich: Bayerische Akademie der Wissenschaften
4. ^ a b de Vaan, Michiel (2008), Etymological Dictionary of Latin and the other Italic Languages, Leiden Indo-European Etymological Dictionary Series 7, Leiden; Boston: Brill
5. ^ a b c d e Köbler, Gerhard (2010), Lateinisches Abkunfts- und Wirkungswörterbuch für Altertum und Mittelalter, online ed., koeblergerhard.de
6. ^ a b c d e Lewis, Charlton T.; Short, Charles (1879), A Latin Dictionary, Oxford: Clarendon Press
7. ^ Stelten, Leo F. (1995), Dictionary of Ecclesiastical Latin, Peabody, Mass.: Hendrickson