grabatus

Forms

grabātus m (genitive grabātī); second declension^[1] The spelling grabattus is commoner in later writers, and crabatus is also found.^[2][3] A neuter grabatum (grabattum) also occurs, as in Caelius Aurelianus.^[3][4][5]

Etymology

It is borrowed from Ancient Greek κράβατος (krábatos), also written with ⟨ττ⟩.^[2][6][3] Lewis & Short call the Greek word Macedonian.^[4]

Earliest recorded meaning

Köbler and Georges cite it first from Lucilius.^[7][5] The TLL doubts an earlier reading in Varro, and finds it in the better writers in Cicero, Catullus, the Moretum, Petronius and Martial.^[3]

Semantic evolution

It is a low bed or couch, usually a poor or wretched one: a pallet or camp bed.^[2][4] Georges describes it as a low bed used by the sick and by students, and above all as the furniture of poor people.^[5] Seneca and Martial use it, and in the Digest one is covered with gilded silver.^[4]

Later writers mostly spell it grabattus, as Apuleius, Tertullian and the old Latin Bible.^[3] The Vulgate uses it of the bed on which a sick person is carried, a stretcher,^[1][4] and medieval Latin of a bier.^[8]

Timeline

• c. 180–102 BC – Lucilius uses it.^[5][7]
• 81–43 BC – Cicero uses it.^[3][4][7]
• 81/79–52/50 BC – Catullus uses it.^[3][5][7]
• 40–102/103 AD – Martial, of a poor man's bed.^[3][4][7]
• 390–406 AD – The Vulgate, of a sick person's stretcher.^[4][1][7]

Meanings

Noun

1. A low, usually mean bed or couch; a pallet, camp bed.^[2][4][1]
2. (Vulgate) A stretcher for the sick.^[1]
3. (Medieval Latin) A bier.^[8]

Related words

• lectus
• cubīle

Usage notes

Isidore calls the word Greek.^[3] French borrowed the word as grabat.^[1]

References

1. ^ a b c d e f Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d Glare, P. G. W., ed. (2012), Oxford Latin Dictionary, 2nd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
3. ^ a b c d e f g h i Thesaurus linguae Latinae (1900–), Leipzig: Teubner; Berlin: De Gruyter; open-access ed., Munich: Bayerische Akademie der Wissenschaften
4. ^ a b c d e f g h i Lewis, Charlton T.; Short, Charles (1879), A Latin Dictionary, Oxford: Clarendon Press
5. ^ a b c d e Georges, Karl Ernst (1913–1918), Ausführliches lateinisch-deutsches Handwörterbuch, 8th ed., ed. Heinrich Georges, Hannover; Leipzig: Hahn
6. ^ Saalfeld, Günther Alexander (1874), Index Graecorum vocabulorum in linguam latinam translatorum, Berlin: Weidmann
7. ^ a b c d e f Köbler, Gerhard (2010), Lateinisches Abkunfts- und Wirkungswörterbuch für Altertum und Mittelalter, online ed., koeblergerhard.de
8. ^ a b Niermeyer, J. F. (1976), Mediae Latinitatis Lexicon Minus, Leiden: Brill