Etymologically
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feretrum

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Pronunciation

  • Classical: [ˈfɛ.rɛ.trũː][1]
  • Ecclesiastical: [ˈfɛː.re.trum][1]

Forms

feretrum n (genitive feretrī); second declension[1]

Etymology

It is borrowed from Ancient Greek φέρετρον (phéretron, “bier, litter”).[2][3][1] Wiktionary adds that it was crossed with, or analysed as, ferō (“to carry”) and -trum, and calls ferculum a doublet with another form of the suffix.[1] Varro already noted that the Greeks had the same word for the bier.[4]

Earliest recorded meaning

Varro is the first to record it: what a dead man's couch is carried on, he says, our ancestors called feretrum, the Greeks pheretron.[4][3]

Semantic evolution

Lewis and Short describe it as a litter for carrying trophies in a triumph, the bodies of the dead or their images, mostly in poetry, beside the native ferculum;[4] the OLD gives the bier and the sense of ferculum.[2] Virgil and Ovid use it for a funeral bier,[4] and Silius Italicus has spoils carried hanging from a bloody litter.[4]

In medieval Latin it came to mean a coffin or tomb and a reliquary or shrine.[5] In New Latin it also named a hearse.[1]

Timeline

  • 116–27 BC – Varro records it as the old word for a bier.[4][3]
  • 70–19 BC – Virgil uses it for a funeral bier.[4][3]
  • 43 BC–18 AD – Ovid uses it for a bier beside a pyre and torches.[4][3]
  • 25–101 AD – Silius Italicus uses it for a litter carrying spoils.[4][3]

Meanings

Noun

  1. A bier, a litter for the dead.[2][4]
  2. A litter for carrying trophies or images in a procession, the same as ferculum.[2][4]
  3. (Medieval Latin) A coffin, a tomb.[5]
  4. (Medieval Latin) A reliquary, a shrine.[5]
  5. (New Latin) A hearse.[1]

References

  1. ^ a b c d e f g Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
  2. ^ a b c d Glare, P. G. W., ed. (2012), Oxford Latin Dictionary, 2nd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
  3. ^ a b c d e f Köbler, Gerhard (2010), Lateinisches Abkunfts- und Wirkungswörterbuch für Altertum und Mittelalter, online ed., koeblergerhard.de
  4. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k Lewis, Charlton T.; Short, Charles (1879), A Latin Dictionary, Oxford: Clarendon Press
  5. ^ a b c Niermeyer, J. F. (1976), Mediae Latinitatis Lexicon Minus, Leiden: Brill