Etymologically
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crusto

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Pronunciation

  • Classical: [ˈkrʊs.toː][1]
  • Ecclesiastical: [ˈkrus.to][1]

Forms

crustō (present infinitive crustāre, perfect active crustāvī, supine crustātum); first conjugation[1]

Etymology

It is from Latin crusta (“crust, shell”) + -ō.[2][3][4]

De Vaan traces crusta to Proto-Italic *krusto- (“hardened”) and Proto-Indo-European *krus-to- (“crushed, pounded”), from a root meaning “to thrust, pound”; he prefers this to the old link with Greek words for ice and frost.[5]

Earliest recorded meaning

Lewis & Short call the verb post-Augustan.[4] The OLD first cites Lucan, who speaks of a house that did not gleam with marble merely laid on the surface, and Pliny the Elder, who tells of apples coated with gypsum or wax and asks who first covered walls with marble at Rome.[2]

Semantic evolution

Besides coating with a layer of stone, plaster or metal (Ammianus Marcellinus has a gate covered with thick iron),[4] it meant decorating with embossed work: Paulus' abridgement of Festus speaks of drinking vessels so decorated.[2][4][6] Apuleius uses it figuratively of a chest and belly caked with a thick crust.[2][7] The neuter plural participle crustāta was used as a noun for shellfish.[4][6]

In Medieval Latin it was glossed for covering with mosaic work, and the Genoese annals use it for stripping churches and crosses of their precious covering.[8]

Timeline

  • 23/24–79 AD – Pliny the Elder uses it of coating fruit and of covering walls with marble.[2][9]
  • c. 125–175 AD – Apuleius uses the participle of a body caked with a crust.[2][9]
  • c. 390 AD – Ammianus Marcellinus describes a gate covered with iron.[4][9]

Meanings

Verb

  1. To cover with a layer or coating, to encrust.[2][4]
  2. To decorate with embossed work, to carve in relief.[2][4]
  3. (Medieval Latin) To cover with mosaic work.[8]
  4. (Medieval Latin) To strip of a precious covering.[8]

Word family

  • crustāta
  • incrustō

References

  1. ^ a b c Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
  2. ^ a b c d e f g h Glare, P. G. W., ed. (2012), Oxford Latin Dictionary, 2nd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
  3. ^ 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 Lewis, Charlton T.; Short, Charles (1879), A Latin Dictionary, Oxford: Clarendon Press
  5. ^ de Vaan, Michiel (2008), Etymological Dictionary of Latin and the other Italic Languages, Leiden Indo-European Etymological Dictionary Series 7, Leiden; Boston: Brill
  6. ^ a b Georges, Karl Ernst (1913–1918), Ausführliches lateinisch-deutsches Handwörterbuch, 8th ed., ed. Heinrich Georges, Hannover; Leipzig: Hahn
  7. ^ Conte, Gian Biagio; Pianezzola, Emilio; Ranucci, Giuliano (2010), il Latino: Vocabolario della lingua latina, 3rd ed., Florence: Le Monnier
  8. ^ a b c Mittellateinisches Wörterbuch bis zum ausgehenden 13. Jahrhundert (1967–), Munich: C. H. Beck; Bayerische Akademie der Wissenschaften
  9. ^ a b c Köbler, Gerhard (2010), Lateinisches Abkunfts- und Wirkungswörterbuch für Altertum und Mittelalter, online ed., koeblergerhard.de