hordeum

Forms

hordeum n (genitive hordeī); second declension^[1] It is also spelled ordeum.^[2][3] Quintilian cites fordeum as archaic, and censures the collective plural.^[2]

Etymology

It is inherited from Proto-Italic *χor(s)d-ejo- (“barley”), a stem with an adjectival suffix.^[4] De Vaan connects it with the Greek, Albanian and Germanic words for barley or grain, and perhaps with Armenian and Hittite words for wheat, but finds it hard to derive them all from one preform;^[4] Latin and Germanic can go back to Proto-Indo-European *gʰ(e/o)rsd-.^[4] Cognate with Ancient Greek κριθή (krithḗ, “barley”), Albanian drithë (“cereal, grain”), Old High German gersta (“barley”) and Hittite karaš- (“wheat, emmer”).^[4][2] De Vaan takes the dialect form ⟨fordeum⟩ as a hypercorrect spelling with /f/.^[4] Wiktionary relates it to horreō (“to bristle”), after the long awns of the ear.^[1] Varro derived the word from bristling, and Isidore from its drying before other grain.^[5]

Earliest recorded meaning

De Vaan dates it from Plautus,^[4] whose Asinaria has “I'll cut your barley if you don't trot”.^[2]

Semantic evolution

It is barley, the plant or its grain, in Cato, Varro and Columella on farming, Livy and Suetonius.^[3][2] Virgil uses the plural, which Quintilian later censured.^[3][2] Celsus uses it of a barleycorn, the small swelling on the eyelid that the Greeks named after barley.^[2] Church Latin keeps the sense barley.^[6] Köbler finds it in many medieval texts, from the law codes to the charters.^[7]

Timeline

• c. 250–184 BC – Plautus of a barley ration.^[2][4][7]
• 234–149 BC – Cato on farming.^[3][7]
• 14–37 AD – Celsus of a swelling on the eyelid.^[2][7]
• c. 35–95/96 AD – Quintilian cites fordeum as archaic.^[2][7]

Meanings

Noun

1. Barley, the plant or its grain.^[2][3][6][1]
2. A barleycorn; a small swelling on the eyelid, a sty.^[2]

Word family

• hordeāceus
• hordeārius
• hordeius
• hordeolus

Related words

• horreō

References

1. ^ a b c d e Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l Glare, P. G. W., ed. (2012), Oxford Latin Dictionary, 2nd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
3. ^ a b c d e Lewis, Charlton T.; Short, Charles (1879), A Latin Dictionary, Oxford: Clarendon Press
4. ^ a b c d e f g de Vaan, Michiel (2008), Etymological Dictionary of Latin and the other Italic Languages, Leiden Indo-European Etymological Dictionary Series 7, Leiden; Boston: Brill
5. ^ Thesaurus linguae Latinae (1900–), Leipzig: Teubner; Berlin: De Gruyter; open-access ed., Munich: Bayerische Akademie der Wissenschaften
6. ^ a b Stelten, Leo F. (1995), Dictionary of Ecclesiastical Latin, Peabody, Mass.: Hendrickson
7. ^ a b c d e Köbler, Gerhard (2010), Lateinisches Abkunfts- und Wirkungswörterbuch für Altertum und Mittelalter, online ed., koeblergerhard.de