Etymologically
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glaesum

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Forms

glaesum n (genitive glaesī); second declension[1] It is also spelled glēsum.[2][3]

Etymology

It is a Germanic word: Pliny the Elder says that the Germans call amber by this name, and Tacitus that the Aestii, who gather it in the shallows and on the shore, do.[4][5] Wiktionary takes it as borrowed from Proto-Germanic *glasą.[1] The Oxford Latin Dictionary sets up Proto-Indo-European *ghlēso- and compares Old High German glas, Old English glæs and the English word glare;[2] Köbler connects it with the root *ǵʰel- (“to shine, gleam”).[6]

Earliest recorded meaning

It appears first in Pliny the Elder, in the 1st century AD, as the Germans' name for amber: “it is certain that amber forms on the islands of the northern ocean and that the Germans call it glaesum”.[4][6]

Semantic evolution

It stayed a foreign word, used by Pliny and Tacitus for the amber of the northern coasts;[5][3] the ordinary Latin word for amber was sucinum, which the TLL gives as its meaning.[4] Pliny also calls the amber islands of the North Sea glaesāriae, with the derived adjective glaesārius.[5][3]

Timeline

  • 23/24–79 AD – Pliny the Elder names amber glaesum as a German word.[4][6]
  • 98–115 AD – Tacitus, in the Germania, says the Aestii call amber glesum.[4][5][6]

Meanings

Noun

  1. Amber.[2][5][3]

Word family

  • glaesārius

References

  1. ^ a b Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
  2. ^ a b c Glare, P. G. W., ed. (2012), Oxford Latin Dictionary, 2nd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
  3. ^ a b c d Georges, Karl Ernst (1913–1918), Ausführliches lateinisch-deutsches Handwörterbuch, 8th ed., ed. Heinrich Georges, Hannover; Leipzig: Hahn
  4. ^ a b c d e Thesaurus linguae Latinae (1900–), Leipzig: Teubner; Berlin: De Gruyter; open-access ed., Munich: Bayerische Akademie der Wissenschaften
  5. ^ a b c d e Lewis, Charlton T.; Short, Charles (1879), A Latin Dictionary, Oxford: Clarendon Press
  6. ^ a b c d Köbler, Gerhard (2010), Lateinisches Abkunfts- und Wirkungswörterbuch für Altertum und Mittelalter, online ed., koeblergerhard.de