lyra

Forms

lyra f (genitive lyrae); first declension^[1] Varro has the Greek accusative lyran.^[2]

Etymology

It is borrowed from Ancient Greek λύρα (lúra, “lyre”).^[2][1][3] Köbler calls the Greek word a technical loanword from the Mediterranean area.^[4]

Earliest recorded meaning

Köbler gives Cicero as its first author,^[4] who tells how Themistocles was thought less cultured because he refused the lyre at a banquet.^[2]

Semantic evolution

It is the lyre, a stringed instrument like the cithara, which myth said Mercury invented and gave to Apollo.^[2][3] In Horace it stands for lyric poetry and a poet's inspiration, as “the Muse who rules the unwarlike lyre”.^[2] Varro uses it of the constellation Lyra, “which the Greeks call lyra and our people fidēs”.^[2]

Church Latin glosses it “lute, lyre”, and lyra tetrachordis is a violin.^[5]

Timeline

• 81–43 BC – Cicero of Themistocles refusing the lyre.^[2][4]
• 116–27 BC – Varro of the constellation.^[2][4]
• 65–8 BC – Horace of lyric poetry.^[2][4]

Meanings

Noun

1. A lyre, (figurative) lyric poetry, poetic inspiration.^[2][1][3]
2. The constellation Lyra.^[2][1]

Word family

• lyricus
• lyricen
• lyristēs

Related words

• cithara
• fidēs
• English lyre

References

1. ^ a b c d e f Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k Glare, P. G. W., ed. (2012), Oxford Latin Dictionary, 2nd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
3. ^ a b c Lewis, Charlton T.; Short, Charles (1879), A Latin Dictionary, Oxford: Clarendon Press
4. ^ a b c d e Köbler, Gerhard (2010), Lateinisches Abkunfts- und Wirkungswörterbuch für Altertum und Mittelalter, online ed., koeblergerhard.de
5. ^ Stelten, Leo F. (1995), Dictionary of Ecclesiastical Latin, Peabody, Mass.: Hendrickson