cuniculus

Forms

cunīculus m (genitive cunīculī); second declension^[1] Paul the Deacon's Festus has a neuter cunīculum in the sense of a tunnel.^[2][3]

Etymology

It is perhaps borrowed from Iberian, as Pliny the Elder's report on rabbits in Spain suggests;^[2][3][1] Lewis & Short call it Spanish.^[2][3][1] Wiktionary suggests an Iberian or Celtiberian word with the Latin diminutive suffix, comparing Basque untxi (“rabbit”).^[1] Köbler also mentions a derivation from cunnus.^[4] It appears in Greek texts as κόνικλος (kóniklos) or κύνικλος (kúniklos).^[3][5]

Earliest recorded meaning

Varro describes it as a third kind of hare, like ours but low, which, he says, is called cunīculus.^[2][1]

Semantic evolution

The rabbit is the first sense: Catullus speaks of something softer than a rabbit's fur, and Pliny the Elder of a town in Spain undermined by rabbits.^[2] From the animal's burrowing it came to mean an underground passage or burrow: Cicero asks what if a man dug tunnels to the treasury.^[2][3] In war it is a mine dug under the walls in a siege, as in Caesar and Livy, and figuratively a secret attack, as Cicero says that what was sought openly is now attacked by mines.^[2][3] It is also a water conduit or channel, as in Cicero's case about the waters of the Velinus.^[2] Church Latin glosses it a mine.^[6]

Timeline

• 116–27 BC – Varro of the rabbit.^[2][4]
• 81–43 BC – Cicero of tunnels, conduits and secret attacks.^[2][4]
• c. 50 BC – Caesar of siege mines.^[2][4]
• 81/79–52/50 BC – Catullus of a rabbit's fur.^[2][4]

Meanings

Noun

1. A rabbit.^[2][3][1]
2. An underground passage, tunnel; a burrow.^[2][3][1]
3. (military) A mine dug in a siege; figuratively, a secret attack.^[2][3][6][1]
4. A water conduit, channel.^[2]

References

1. ^ a b c d e f g h i j 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 f g h i Lewis, Charlton T.; Short, Charles (1879), A Latin Dictionary, Oxford: Clarendon Press
4. ^ a b c d e Köbler, Gerhard (2010), Lateinisches Abkunfts- und Wirkungswörterbuch für Altertum und Mittelalter, online ed., koeblergerhard.de
5. ^ Thesaurus linguae Latinae (1900–), Leipzig: Teubner; Berlin: De Gruyter; open-access ed., Munich: Bayerische Akademie der Wissenschaften
6. ^ a b Stelten, Leo F. (1995), Dictionary of Ecclesiastical Latin, Peabody, Mass.: Hendrickson