hamatus

Forms

hāmātus (feminine hāmāta, neuter hāmātum); first/second-declension adjective^[1] Lucretius' manuscripts spell it amātus.^[2]

Etymology

It is from Latin hāmus (“hook”) + -ātus.^[3][1][2] De Vaan finds no etymology for hāmus: only Ancient Greek χαμός (khamós, “curved”) and χαβός (khabós) come close, but their variation is unexplained and a loan would not account for the long vowel of the Latin word.^[4]

Earliest recorded meaning

De Vaan and Köbler record it first in Lucretius,^[4][5] who has it several times in his second book.^[2]

Semantic evolution

It means furnished with hooks, or barbed: Cicero writes of things made of rough, smooth, hooked and barbed bodies,^[3][6] Ovid uses it of claws, of a barbed arrow and of thorny brambles,^[6] and a poem in the Tibullan collection of brambles that scratch the legs.^[3] It also means hook-shaped, as Ovid's hāmātus ēnsis, a curved sword.^[3][6] Medieval Latin used it of armour made of rings, with reference to Virgil.^[7] Köbler records it in Albertus Magnus and in the Waltharius.^[5]

Timeline

• 96–55 BC – Lucretius uses it.^[2][5]
• 81–43 BC – Cicero uses it of hooked bodies.^[3][5]
• 43 BC–18 AD – Ovid uses it of claws, arrows and a curved sword.^[6][5]

Meanings

Adjective

1. Furnished with hooks, hooked; of arrows, barbed; of bushes, thorny.^[3][6]
2. Hook-shaped, crooked.^[3][6][1]
3. (Medieval Latin) Made of rings, of chain mail.^[7]

Related words

• hāmus

References

1. ^ a b c d e Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d Thesaurus linguae Latinae (1900–), Leipzig: Teubner; Berlin: De Gruyter; open-access ed., Munich: Bayerische Akademie der Wissenschaften
3. ^ a b c d e f g Glare, P. G. W., ed. (2012), Oxford Latin Dictionary, 2nd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
4. ^ a b de Vaan, Michiel (2008), Etymological Dictionary of Latin and the other Italic Languages, Leiden Indo-European Etymological Dictionary Series 7, Leiden; Boston: Brill
5. ^ a b c d e Köbler, Gerhard (2010), Lateinisches Abkunfts- und Wirkungswörterbuch für Altertum und Mittelalter, online ed., koeblergerhard.de
6. ^ a b c d e f Lewis, Charlton T.; Short, Charles (1879), A Latin Dictionary, Oxford: Clarendon Press
7. ^ a b Niermeyer, J. F. (1976), Mediae Latinitatis Lexicon Minus, Leiden: Brill