garum

Forms

garum n (genitive garī); second declension^[1] Also garon.^[2] Manuscripts and inscriptions sometimes spell it with car-.^[3]

Etymology

It is borrowed from Ancient Greek γάρον (gáron), a form of γάρος (gáros), the name of the fish from which the sauce was first made.^[4][1][3] The origin of the Greek word is unknown.^[5]

Isidore of Seville says the salted fish liquor was once made from a fish the Greeks called by that name and kept that name although it was made from countless kinds of fish.^[6]

Earliest recorded meaning

Varro is the first to mention it, remarking that it has no plural;^[3] it is in general use from Horace on.^[3] Horace speaks of garum de sucis piscis Hiberi, “garum from the juices of the Spanish fish”.^[7][2]

Semantic evolution

It was a highly prized fish sauce, made at first from the garos and later mostly from the mackerel.^[4][2] Pliny the Elder describes its making, and Martial, Seneca and Petronius mention it.^[2][7] In Medieval Latin the word appears in capitularies, charters, formulae and glossaries.^[8]

Timeline

• 116–27 BC – Varro notes that the word has no plural.^[3]
• 65–8 BC – Horace mentions garum made from Spanish fish.^[7][2]
• 14–37 AD – Celsus uses it.^[8]
• 23/24–79 AD – Pliny the Elder describes how it is made.^[2]
• 40–102/103 AD – Martial mentions it in his epigrams.^[2]
• c. 560–636 AD – Isidore of Seville explains the name.^[6]

Meanings

Noun

1. A highly esteemed fish sauce made from fish fermented in brine.^[4][2][7]

Usage notes

Varro notes that, unlike vinum, vina, it is not used in the plural.^[3] Köbler lists a separate medieval gārum “narrow strip of land”, from Old English gāra.^[8]

References

1. ^ a b c d Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f g h Lewis, Charlton T.; Short, Charles (1879), A Latin Dictionary, Oxford: Clarendon Press
3. ^ a b c d e f Thesaurus linguae Latinae (1900–), Leipzig: Teubner; Berlin: De Gruyter; open-access ed., Munich: Bayerische Akademie der Wissenschaften
4. ^ a b c Glare, P. G. W., ed. (2012), Oxford Latin Dictionary, 2nd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
5. ^ Beekes, Robert S. P. (2010), Etymological Dictionary of Greek, with the assistance of Lucien van Beek, Leiden Indo-European Etymological Dictionary Series 10, Leiden; Boston: Brill
6. ^ a b Isidore of Seville, Etymologiarum sive Originum libri XX, ed. W. M. Lindsay (Oxford, 1911).
7. ^ a b c d Conte, Gian Biagio; Pianezzola, Emilio; Ranucci, Giuliano (2010), il Latino: Vocabolario della lingua latina, 3rd ed., Florence: Le Monnier
8. ^ a b c Köbler, Gerhard (2010), Lateinisches Abkunfts- und Wirkungswörterbuch für Altertum und Mittelalter, online ed., koeblergerhard.de