fulvus

Forms

fulvus (feminine fulva, neuter fulvum); first/second-declension adjective^[1]

Etymology

The origin is uncertain.^[2][3] De Vaan finds only theoretical preforms, perhaps Proto-Italic *fe/olawo- and Proto-Indo-European *dʰe/olH-uo- (“yellow”).^[2] He rejects the often cited link with Lithuanian gel̃tas (“yellow”), finds Driessen's comparison with Dutch del (“yellowish”) hazardous, and thinks the Armenian words for “yellow” and “jaundice” more promising.^[2] Wiktionary instead derives it from Proto-Indo-European *bʰl̥wós, from Proto-Indo-European *bʰel- (“to shine”), as Köbler does (Pokorny 160), linking it with fulgeō (“to flash”).^[1][4] The OLD compares flāvus (“yellow”).^[5]

Earliest recorded meaning

De Vaan and the TLL date it from Ennius;^[2][3][4] it is above all a poets' word, absent from Plautus, Terence, Catullus and Juvenal, and used in prose by Seneca, Pliny the Elder and a few later writers.^[3]

Semantic evolution

The OLD defines it as a brown ranging from dull yellow to reddish brown: tawny, sandy.^[5] It is used of lions in Lucretius, the she-wolf's hide in Virgil, a Spartan hound in Horace, horsehair crests in Ovid, and of sand and gold.^[6][7] The ancients found the colour hard to define: Gellius thought it a mixture of red and green, and Servius took Virgil's tawny jasper as green.^[3]

Church Latin glosses it “gold-coloured”.^[8] It survives in Portuguese fulo.^[3]

Timeline

• 204–169 BC – Ennius, the first poet to use it.^[2][3][4]
• 96–55 BC – Lucretius of lions.^[6][4]
• 70–19 BC – Virgil of a wolf's hide.^[6][4]
• c. 165 AD – Gellius discusses what colour it names.^[3][4]

Meanings

Adjective

1. tawny, reddish yellow, yellowish brown, sandy.^[5][6][7]
2. (poetic) Golden; sometimes greenish.^[1][3][8]

Related words

• fulvaster
• fulvēscēns
• flāvus
• fulgeō

References

1. ^ a b c d e Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e de Vaan, Michiel (2008), Etymological Dictionary of Latin and the other Italic Languages, Leiden Indo-European Etymological Dictionary Series 7, Leiden; Boston: Brill
3. ^ a b c d e f g h Thesaurus linguae Latinae (1900–), Leipzig: Teubner; Berlin: De Gruyter; open-access ed., Munich: Bayerische Akademie der Wissenschaften
4. ^ a b c d e f Köbler, Gerhard (2010), Lateinisches Abkunfts- und Wirkungswörterbuch für Altertum und Mittelalter, online ed., koeblergerhard.de
5. ^ a b c Glare, P. G. W., ed. (2012), Oxford Latin Dictionary, 2nd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
6. ^ a b c d Lewis, Charlton T.; Short, Charles (1879), A Latin Dictionary, Oxford: Clarendon Press
7. ^ a b Simpson, D. P. (1959), Cassell's New Latin Dictionary, London: Cassell
8. ^ a b Stelten, Leo F. (1995), Dictionary of Ecclesiastical Latin, Peabody, Mass.: Hendrickson