falcifer

Forms

falcifer (feminine falcifera, neuter falciferum); first/second-declension adjective (nominative masculine singular in -er)^[1]

Etymology

It is from Latin falx (“sickle”) + -fer (“bearing”), “sickle-bearing”;^[2][1] the TLL explains the second part by ferō (“to carry”).^[3] The origin of falx itself is uncertain: de Vaan rejects the old comparison with the Sicilian name for a sickle and concludes that the word can at most be a borrowing from a non-Latin Indo-European language of Italy.^[4]

Earliest recorded meaning

Lucretius, its first author, speaks of falciferōs currūs, chariots armed with scythes.^[3][5][6]

Semantic evolution

Besides scythed war chariots, which Silius also calls by this word,^[7] it described hands holding a sickle: Ovid speaks of shore meadows that falciferae manūs, “sickle-bearing hands”, had never mown.^[3][5] Above all it became an epithet of Saturn, the god with the sickle, in Ovid and Martial,^[8][3] and Christian writers such as Arnobius and Dracontius still use it of him.^[3]

Medieval Latin also used it as a noun: Köbler records falcifer “scythe-bearer” from the second half of the 10th century,^[6] and in British sources it means a mower, as in Geoffrey of Monmouth.^[9]

Timeline

• 96–55 BC – Lucretius writes of scythed chariots.^[3][6]
• 43 BC–AD 18 – Ovid uses it of mowers' hands and as an epithet of Saturn.^[3][6]
• 40–102/103 AD – Martial calls Saturn the falcifer Tonāns.^[8][6]
• 297–310 AD – Arnobius uses it of Saturn.^[3][6]
• 2nd half of the 10th century – It is used as a noun, “scythe-bearer”.^[6]

Meanings

Adjective

1. Bearing a sickle or scythe.^[2][8]
2. (of chariots) Armed with scythes, scythed.^[2][7]
3. (epithet of Saturn) The sickle-bearing god.^[8][3]

Noun

1. (Medieval Latin) A mower, scythe-bearer.^[9][6]

References

1. ^ a b c d Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c 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 Thesaurus linguae Latinae (1900–), Leipzig: Teubner; Berlin: De Gruyter; open-access ed., Munich: Bayerische Akademie der Wissenschaften
4. ^ de Vaan, Michiel (2008), Etymological Dictionary of Latin and the other Italic Languages, Leiden Indo-European Etymological Dictionary Series 7, Leiden; Boston: Brill
5. ^ a b Conte, Gian Biagio; Pianezzola, Emilio; Ranucci, Giuliano (2010), il Latino: Vocabolario della lingua latina, 3rd ed., Florence: Le Monnier
6. ^ a b c d e f g h Köbler, Gerhard (2010), Lateinisches Abkunfts- und Wirkungswörterbuch für Altertum und Mittelalter, online ed., koeblergerhard.de
7. ^ a b Georges, Karl Ernst (1913–1918), Ausführliches lateinisch-deutsches Handwörterbuch, 8th ed., ed. Heinrich Georges, Hannover; Leipzig: Hahn
8. ^ a b c d Lewis, Charlton T.; Short, Charles (1879), A Latin Dictionary, Oxford: Clarendon Press
9. ^ a b Latham, R. E., D. R. Howlett, R. K. Ashdowne, et al. (1975–2013), Dictionary of Medieval Latin from British Sources, London: British Academy / Oxford University Press