fornix

Forms

fornix m (genitive fornicis); third declension^[1]

Etymology

It is probably formed from Latin furnus (“oven”), an oven with an arched or domed top, and is related to fornāx (“furnace”).^[2][3][4] Wiktionary reconstructs ⟨*fornikos⟩, vaulted like a furnace.^[1] Etymonline traces the family to Proto-Indo-European *gʷʰer- (“to heat”).^[4]

Earliest recorded meaning

Köbler dates it from Ennius.^[5] The OLD's earliest quotation is an inscription recording the building of foundations and arches.^[2]

Semantic evolution

It is a vault or arch, and an archway: Cicero describes a crowd of slaves bursting onto the stage from the archways and doors.^[2] It is also a monumental arch: Cicero jokes that Memmius thought himself so great that he ducked his head under the Fabian Arch.^[2] Seneca says that Democritus was believed to have invented the arch.^[6] From the vaulted cellars where prostitutes stood it came to mean a brothel, as in Horace.^[2][7] In medieval Latin it could also mean a furnace, by confusion with fornāx, and figuratively a foundation.^[1] English fornix, an arched structure in anatomy, is from it, from the 1680s.^[4]

Timeline

• 204–169 BC – Ennius uses it.^[5]
• 81–43 BC – Cicero of archways and of the Fabian Arch.^[2][5]
• 65–8 BC – Horace of a brothel.^[2][5]
• 4 BC–65 AD – Seneca of the invention of the arch.^[6][5]
• 1680s – English fornix in anatomy.^[4]

Meanings

Noun

1. A vault, arch; an archway; a monumental arch.^[2][6][1]
2. A cellar used for prostitution, a brothel.^[2][7][1]
3. (Medieval Latin) A furnace, oven; figuratively, a foundation.^[1]

Word family

• fornicāria
• fornicārius
• cōnfornicō
• fornicātim
• fornicātiō
• fornicātor
• fornicātrīx
• fornicātus
• fornicor

Related words

• furnus
• fornāx
• English fornication

References

1. ^ a b c d e f g h Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f g h i 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 Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
5. ^ a b c d e Köbler, Gerhard (2010), Lateinisches Abkunfts- und Wirkungswörterbuch für Altertum und Mittelalter, online ed., koeblergerhard.de
6. ^ a b c Lewis, Charlton T.; Short, Charles (1879), A Latin Dictionary, Oxford: Clarendon Press
7. ^ a b Niermeyer, J. F. (1976), Mediae Latinitatis Lexicon Minus, Leiden: Brill