Etymologically
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fulvus

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Pronunciation

  • Classical: [ˈfʊɫ.wʊs][1]
  • Ecclesiastical: [ˈful.vus][1]

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]

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