lactuca

Forms

lactūca f (genitive lactūcae); first declension^[1]

Etymology

It is from Latin lac (“milk”) + -ūca, with the ending of plant names such as ērūca (“rocket”).^[2][3][1] Wiktionary explains the name from the milky juice of cut lettuce stems.^[1] De Vaan traces lac to Proto-Indo-European *glg-t- (“milk”), cognate with Ancient Greek γάλα (gála).^[4]

Varro already derived the name from the word for milk, because the plant has milk in it, and Pliny the Elder, Palladius and Isidore repeat the explanation.^[3][5]

Earliest recorded meaning

De Vaan records it from Varro,^[4] and Köbler from Lucilius;^[6] the OLD's first citation is from a fragment of an unknown Roman comedy.^[2] It is the lettuce.^[2][7]

Semantic evolution

Columella, Celsus and Pliny the Elder treat it as a garden vegetable and a remedy, and Pliny describes several kinds.^[7][5] Horace says that after wine lettuce floats in a sour stomach (lactuca innatat acri post vinum stomacho).^[8] Lactuca marina or caprina was a kind of spurge.^[2][9] The Vulgate has lactucae agrestes, wild lettuces, in Exodus.^[5] In Ecclesiastical Latin it is simply lettuce.^[10]

Timeline

• c. 180–102 BC – Lucilius uses it, according to Köbler.^[6]
• 116–27 BC – Varro derives its name from lac.^[3][4][6]
• 65–8 BC – Horace mentions lettuce after wine.^[8][6]
• 14–37 AD – Celsus names lactuca marina, a spurge.^[2][6]
• 23/24–79 AD – Pliny the Elder describes several kinds.^[7][6]

Meanings

Noun

1. Lettuce.^[2][7]
2. lactūca marīna, lactūca caprīna: kinds of spurge.^[2][9]

Word family

• lactūcārius
• lactucosus
• lactūcula

References

1. ^ a b c d e Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f g Glare, P. G. W., ed. (2012), Oxford Latin Dictionary, 2nd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
3. ^ a b c Thesaurus linguae Latinae (1900–), Leipzig: Teubner; Berlin: De Gruyter; open-access ed., Munich: Bayerische Akademie der Wissenschaften
4. ^ a b c 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 Georges, Karl Ernst (1913–1918), Ausführliches lateinisch-deutsches Handwörterbuch, 8th ed., ed. Heinrich Georges, Hannover; Leipzig: Hahn
6. ^ a b c d e f Köbler, Gerhard (2010), Lateinisches Abkunfts- und Wirkungswörterbuch für Altertum und Mittelalter, online ed., koeblergerhard.de
7. ^ a b c d Lewis, Charlton T.; Short, Charles (1879), A Latin Dictionary, Oxford: Clarendon Press
8. ^ a b Conte, Gian Biagio; Pianezzola, Emilio; Ranucci, Giuliano (2010), il Latino: Vocabolario della lingua latina, 3rd ed., Florence: Le Monnier
9. ^ a b Gaffiot, Félix (2016), Dictionnaire latin-français, new ed. by Gérard Gréco et al. (Gaffiot 2016), online ed.
10. ^ Stelten, Leo F. (1995), Dictionary of Ecclesiastical Latin, Peabody, Mass.: Hendrickson