embasicoetas

Forms

embasicoetās m (genitive embasicoetae, accusative embasicoetān); first declension^[1][2]

Etymology

It is borrowed from Ancient Greek ἐμβασικοίτας (embasikoítas),^[1][3][4] a Doric form,^[3] beside ἐμβασικοίτης (embasikoítēs).^[2][5] The Greek word is a compound of ἐμβαίνω (embaínō, “to go in, go aboard”) and κοίτη (koítē),^[1][5] literally “bed-climber”.^[2][5]

Earliest recorded meaning

It occurs only in Petronius, in a scene of the Satyricon built on a pun.^[3][6][5] A character recalls that an embasicoetas had been ordered, meaning a cup, and Quartilla answers: tu non intellexeras cinaedum embasicoetan vocari? (“had you not understood that a cinaedus is called embasicoetas?”).^[3] A little later, while a girl's head is being wrapped in the bridal veil, an embasicoetas carries the torch before her.^[3]

Semantic evolution

The dictionaries explain the second sense differently:^[3][4][2][1] the TLL takes it as the name of a drinking cup, citing Athenaeus,^[3] Lewis & Short as an obscenely shaped drinking vessel,^[4] while Georges and the OLD think of a sleeping draught, a nightcap.^[2][1]

Timeline

• before 66 AD – Petronius uses it with a double sense, of a cup and of a cinaedus.^[3][5]

Meanings

Noun

1. The passive partner in sex between men, a cinaedus.^[1][4]
2. A kind of drinking cup,^[3][4][6] or, as the OLD suggests, a sleeping draught, a nightcap.^[1][2]

References

1. ^ a b c d e f g Glare, P. G. W., ed. (2012), Oxford Latin Dictionary, 2nd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
2. ^ a b c d e f Georges, Karl Ernst (1913–1918), Ausführliches lateinisch-deutsches Handwörterbuch, 8th ed., ed. Heinrich Georges, Hannover; Leipzig: Hahn
3. ^ a b c d e f g h i Thesaurus linguae Latinae (1900–), Leipzig: Teubner; Berlin: De Gruyter; open-access ed., Munich: Bayerische Akademie der Wissenschaften
4. ^ a b c d e Lewis, Charlton T.; Short, Charles (1879), A Latin Dictionary, Oxford: Clarendon Press
5. ^ a b c d e Köbler, Gerhard (2010), Lateinisches Abkunfts- und Wirkungswörterbuch für Altertum und Mittelalter, online ed., koeblergerhard.de
6. ^ a b Gaffiot, Félix (2016), Dictionnaire latin-français, new ed. by Gérard Gréco et al. (Gaffiot 2016), online ed.