Etymologically
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crustulum

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Forms

crustulum n (genitive crustulī); second declension[1][2] Inscriptions have the shortened crustlum and the form clustrum.[1][3]

Etymology

It is from Latin crustum (“cake, pastry”) + -ulum, a diminutive.[1][2][4] De Vaan lists both words as derivatives of crusta (“crust”), which he traces to Proto-Italic *krusto- (“hardened”) and Proto-Indo-European *krus-to- (“crushed, pounded”).[5]

Earliest recorded meaning

Plautus has it first,[5][6] in the Stichus, for a small pastry crumbled up.[4][7]

Semantic evolution

It named a small cake or sweet pastry, a kind of placenta.[1][4] Lucilius has someone taste the pastries alone,[4] and Horace recalls how coaxing teachers once gave pastries to boys, a picture Jerome echoes.[4] Seneca speaks of consoling children with a pastry, and Juvenal of a slave licking pastries.[4]

Paulus' abridgement of Festus mentions a sacrificial pastry shaped like a boat and cooked in oil,[4] and the life of Hadrian in the Historia Augusta lists it with pheasant, sow's udder and ham in the dish called tetrapharmacum.[4]

Timeline

  • c. 250–184 BC – Plautus uses it in the Stichus.[4][6]
  • c. 180–102 BC – Lucilius uses it of tasting pastries.[4][6]
  • 65–8 BC – Horace uses it of pastries given to schoolboys.[4][6]
  • 4 BC–65 AD – Seneca uses it of consoling children.[4][6]
  • c. 67–c. 127 AD – Juvenal uses it in his ninth satire.[4][6]

Meanings

Noun

  1. A small cake or pastry, a sweet.[1][2][3]

Word family

  • crustulārius

References

  1. ^ a b c d e Glare, P. G. W., ed. (2012), Oxford Latin Dictionary, 2nd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
  2. ^ a b c Lewis, Charlton T.; Short, Charles (1879), A Latin Dictionary, Oxford: Clarendon Press
  3. ^ a b Georges, Karl Ernst (1913–1918), Ausführliches lateinisch-deutsches Handwörterbuch, 8th ed., ed. Heinrich Georges, Hannover; Leipzig: Hahn
  4. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m Thesaurus linguae Latinae (1900–), Leipzig: Teubner; Berlin: De Gruyter; open-access ed., Munich: Bayerische Akademie der Wissenschaften
  5. ^ 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
  6. ^ a b c d e f Köbler, Gerhard (2010), Lateinisches Abkunfts- und Wirkungswörterbuch für Altertum und Mittelalter, online ed., koeblergerhard.de
  7. ^ Conte, Gian Biagio; Pianezzola, Emilio; Ranucci, Giuliano (2010), il Latino: Vocabolario della lingua latina, 3rd ed., Florence: Le Monnier