ludibrium

Forms

lūdibrium n (genitive lūdibriī or lūdibrī); second declension^[1]

Etymology

It is formed from lūdus (“game, play”) or lūdō (“to play, mock”), though the formation is not clear; the OLD compares manubrium (“handle”), the TLL opprobrium (“reproach”).^[2][3][1] De Vaan traces ⟨lūdō⟩ to Proto-Italic *loide/o- (“to play”) and Proto-Indo-European *loid- (“to let go, play”), cognate with Lithuanian léisti (“to let”).^[4]

Earliest recorded meaning

Köbler gives Plautus as its first author.^[5]

Semantic evolution

It is a plaything, as Cicero's Bias, who did not regard “these playthings of fortune” as his own, and playful or wanton behaviour, as Livy's kingdom that might perish “through wantonness” under a boy-king.^[2][6] More often it is a laughing stock, as Livy's young man taken to Delphi by the Tarquins, “more a butt than a companion”, insulting treatment or mockery, and in the plural insults or outrages, as Livy's “the enemy's yoke and the victor's insults”.^[2] Livy also uses it of a sham, as a rampart of baggage scarcely strong enough to stop women.^[2]

Church Latin glosses it “scorn, mockery, derision, jest, laughingstock”.^[7]

Timeline

• c. 250–184 BC – Plautus.^[5]
• 96–55 BC – Lucretius of things that are mere jests.^[6][5]
• 81–43 BC – Cicero of the playthings of fortune.^[2][5]
• 59 BC–17 AD – Livy of a laughing stock and of insults.^[2][5]

Meanings

Noun

1. A plaything, toy; wantonness; a jest.^[2][1]
2. A laughing stock.^[2][1][7]
3. Mockery, derision, (plural) insults, outrages.^[2][1][6]
4. A sham, pretence.^[2]

Word family

• lūdibriōsus

Related words

• lūdus
• lūdō
• lūdificō
• irrīsiō

References

1. ^ a b c d e f g Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f g h i j Glare, P. G. W., ed. (2012), Oxford Latin Dictionary, 2nd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
3. ^ Thesaurus linguae Latinae (1900–), Leipzig: Teubner; Berlin: De Gruyter; open-access ed., Munich: Bayerische Akademie der Wissenschaften
4. ^ 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 Lewis, Charlton T.; Short, Charles (1879), A Latin Dictionary, Oxford: Clarendon Press
7. ^ a b Stelten, Leo F. (1995), Dictionary of Ecclesiastical Latin, Peabody, Mass.: Hendrickson