elleborus

Forms

elleborus m (genitive elleborī); second declension^[1] It is also spelled ⟨helleborus⟩, and the neuter ⟨elleborum⟩ (⟨helleborum⟩) is commoner.^[2][3][4] The manuscripts of Plautus and some of Pliny the Elder have the spelling with ⟨h-⟩.^[4] Medical texts and glossaries also write ⟨eleborus⟩.^[4]

Etymology

It is borrowed from Ancient Greek ἑλλέβορος (helléboros, “hellebore”).^[1][5][6] Köbler, following Frisk, connects its first part with Ancient Greek ἐλλός (ellós, “young deer”).^[7] The native Latin name of the plant was vērātrum.^[2][3][4]

Isidore of Seville explained the name from a river Elleborus in Greece, around which the plant was said to grow.^[4]

Earliest recorded meaning

The TLL records it from Plautus, Cato and Catullus on;^[4] Plautus uses it in the Menaechmi.^[8][4]

Semantic evolution

It named hellebore, a plant the ancients used against madness and epilepsy:^[2][3] the white kind as an emetic and the black, also called melampodion, as a purgative.^[3] Pliny the Elder discusses it at length and says that the best grew on Anticyra;^[2][3] he derives melampodion from Melampus.^[4] The word is masculine in Virgil and Columella and neuter in Cato and Pliny.^[4]

In medieval Latin it named both the black hellebore or Christmas rose and the white hellebore, and was used in medicine and alchemy.^[6] Old English glosses render it wœdeberge.^[7][4]

Timeline

• c. 250–184 BC – Plautus uses it.^[8][4][7]
• 234–149 BC – Cato uses the neuter elleborum.^[4][7]
• 70–19 BC – Virgil uses the masculine plural ellebori.^[8][4][7]
• 23/24–79 AD – Pliny the Elder describes its kinds and uses.^[2][3][7]
• c. 560–636 AD – Isidore of Seville derives the name from a river in Greece.^[4][7]

Meanings

Noun

1. hellebore, a plant used as a remedy for madness and epilepsy.^[2][3][1]
2. (Medieval Latin) Black hellebore, Christmas rose; also white hellebore.^[6]

Related words

• English hellebore

References

1. ^ a b c d e Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f Lewis, Charlton T.; Short, Charles (1879), A Latin Dictionary, Oxford: Clarendon Press
3. ^ a b c d e f g 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 n Thesaurus linguae Latinae (1900–), Leipzig: Teubner; Berlin: De Gruyter; open-access ed., Munich: Bayerische Akademie der Wissenschaften
5. ^ Saalfeld, Günther Alexander (1874), Index Graecorum vocabulorum in linguam latinam translatorum, Berlin: Weidmann
6. ^ a b c Mittellateinisches Wörterbuch bis zum ausgehenden 13. Jahrhundert (1967–), Munich: C. H. Beck; Bayerische Akademie der Wissenschaften
7. ^ a b c d e f g Köbler, Gerhard (2010), Lateinisches Abkunfts- und Wirkungswörterbuch für Altertum und Mittelalter, online ed., koeblergerhard.de
8. ^ a b c Gaffiot, Félix (2016), Dictionnaire latin-français, new ed. by Gérard Gréco et al. (Gaffiot 2016), online ed.