macies

Forms

maciēs f (genitive maciēī); fifth declension^[1]

Etymology

It is related to macer (“lean, thin”) and maceō (“to be thin”), with the suffix -iēs.^[2][3][1] De Vaan traces macer to Proto-Italic *makro- (“long, lean”) and Proto-Indo-European *mh₂ḱ-ro- (“long”).^[4] Cognate with Ancient Greek μακρός (makrós, “long”), Hittite maklant- (“thin, meagre”) and Old Irish do·formaig (“to add, increase”).^[4]

Earliest recorded meaning

De Vaan and Köbler date it from Lucretius;^[4][5] the OLD quotes an early tragedy of unknown authorship in which a body wastes away with leanness.^[2]

Semantic evolution

It means thinness of body, leanness or wasting, as Cicero asks with what weakness and what thinness the consul Hirtius set out to war.^[2][3] Horace personifies it: Wasting and a new troop of fevers fell upon the earth.^[2] Of soil it means poverty or thinness, as in Ovid, and of style meagreness: Quintilian complains that some teachers take thinness for health.^[2] Church Latin glosses it emaciation, thinness, poverty.^[6]

Timeline

• 96–55 BC – Lucretius uses it.^[4][5]
• 81–43 BC – Cicero of a consul's thinness.^[3][5]
• 65–8 BC – Horace personifies wasting.^[2][5]
• 43 BC–18 AD – Ovid of poor soil.^[2][5]
• c. 35–95/96 AD – Quintilian of meagre style.^[2][5]

Meanings

Noun

1. Thinness of body, leanness, wasting, emaciation.^[2][3][6][1]
2. Of soil, poverty, thinness.^[2][1]
3. Of style, meagreness.^[2]

Word family

• maciō
• macilentus
• ēmaciō

Related words

• maceō
• macer

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 d Lewis, Charlton T.; Short, Charles (1879), A Latin Dictionary, Oxford: Clarendon Press
4. ^ a b c d 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 f Köbler, Gerhard (2010), Lateinisches Abkunfts- und Wirkungswörterbuch für Altertum und Mittelalter, online ed., koeblergerhard.de
6. ^ a b Stelten, Leo F. (1995), Dictionary of Ecclesiastical Latin, Peabody, Mass.: Hendrickson