lea

Forms

lea f (genitive leae); first declension^[1]

Etymology

It is from Latin leō (“lion”), a feminine made to it.^[2][3][4] leō is itself borrowed from Ancient Greek λέων (léōn, “lion”).^[1]

Earliest recorded meaning

Varro used it in a fragment, panthera et lea, quoted by the Virgil commentator Philargyrius,^[3][5] and the first surviving text with it is Lucretius, of lionesses that hurl their bodies in a leap.^[3][4]

Semantic evolution

It is a poetic word for a lioness, beside the usual leaena.^[5][1] Ovid uses both, as in a saeva lea that he calls leaena a few lines before, and in the Chimaera with the breast and face of a lioness.^[3][5] Valerius Flaccus uses it of lions in general.^[6] A version of the Old Latin psalter has super leam et basiliscum, where the Vulgate has aspidem.^[3]

The Roman grammarians discussed whether it was good Latin.^[3] Philargyrius says that although the ancients denied that the word was Latin, it had authority; they used leō for both the male and the female, as Plautus did.^[3] Charisius says that one says leaena, not lea, but that Ovid has the latter,^[3] and Servius counts it, with hospita and paupera, among the feminines the poets coined, since nouns in ⟨-o⟩ do not make feminines of their own.^[3]

Timeline

• 116–27 BC – Varro uses panthera et lea.^[3][4]
• 96–55 BC – Lucretius uses it of enraged lionesses.^[3][4]
• 43 BC–18 AD – Ovid uses it in the Metamorphoses and the Fasti.^[3][4]
• end of the 1st century AD – Valerius Flaccus uses it of lions in general.^[6][4]
• c. 400 AD – Servius counts it among the poets' feminines.^[3][4]

Meanings

Noun

1. (poetic) A lioness.^[2][5][1]
2. (poetic) A lion in general.^[6]

Related words

• leō
• leaena

Usage notes

The ordinary word is leaena, which Servius calls Greek;^[3][5] Nonius notes leae used for leaenae.^[3][5]

References

1. ^ a b c d e f Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b 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 j k l m n o 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 Köbler, Gerhard (2010), Lateinisches Abkunfts- und Wirkungswörterbuch für Altertum und Mittelalter, online ed., koeblergerhard.de
5. ^ a b c d e f Lewis, Charlton T.; Short, Charles (1879), A Latin Dictionary, Oxford: Clarendon Press
6. ^ a b c Georges, Karl Ernst (1913–1918), Ausführliches lateinisch-deutsches Handwörterbuch, 8th ed., ed. Heinrich Georges, Hannover; Leipzig: Hahn