cyathus

Forms

cyathus m (genitive cyathī); second declension^[1] Also cyatus, in Cato, Frontinus and inscriptions.^[2][3]

Etymology

It is borrowed from Ancient Greek κύαθος (kúathos, “ladle, cup”).^[2][1][4]

Earliest recorded meaning

Plautus has it first,^[4] with cyathum et cantharum, “ladle and tankard”, in the Pseudolus.^[2]

Semantic evolution

It is the small ladle used to take wine from the mixing bowl into the cups,^[5] and so the office of the cup-bearer: Horace asks what boy will be set at the ladle.^[2] As a measure it is a twelfth of a sextārius, already in Plautus, and the number of ladlefuls of wine mixed with water: Plautus has a toast of seven ladles each.^[2] Columella uses it as a dry measure of ten drachmas.^[2] Varro, Suetonius and Juvenal have it too.^[5] Church Latin has “cup, tumbler”.^[6]

Timeline

• c. 250–184 BC – Plautus, of a ladle and of a measure of wine.^[2][4]
• 65–8 BC – Horace, of the cup-bearer's ladle.^[2][4]
• 1st century AD – Columella, of a dry measure.^[2][4]

Meanings

Noun

1. A ladle for wine; the office of cupbearer.^[2][5][1]
2. A liquid measure, a twelfth of a sextārius; a ladleful of wine.^[2][1]
3. A dry measure of ten drachmas.^[2]
4. (Ecclesiastical Latin) A cup, tumbler.^[6]

Word family

• cyathissō
• sesquicyathus

Related words

• crātēr
• pōculum
• cantharus

References

1. ^ a b c d e f Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l 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 Köbler, Gerhard (2010), Lateinisches Abkunfts- und Wirkungswörterbuch für Altertum und Mittelalter, online ed., koeblergerhard.de
5. ^ a b c Lewis, Charlton T.; Short, Charles (1879), A Latin Dictionary, Oxford: Clarendon Press
6. ^ a b Stelten, Leo F. (1995), Dictionary of Ecclesiastical Latin, Peabody, Mass.: Hendrickson