Etymologically
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garum

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Pronunciation

  • Classical: [ˈɡa.rũː][1]
  • Ecclesiastical: [ˈɡaː.rum][1]

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