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mancus

Etymology and origin of the Latin word mancus

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Confidence
Probable
Formation
Derivation
First attested
Plautus

Pronunciation

  • IPA (Classical): [ˈmaŋ.kʊs][1]
  • IPA (Ecclesiastical): [ˈmaŋ.kus][1]

Forms

mancus (feminine manca, neuter mancum); first/second-declension adjective[1]

Etymology

It is derived from manus “hand” with a suffix /-ko-/, so “having a defect of the hand”, as peccō was explained from a *peccus with a bad foot.[2][3] De Vaan thinks it must contain the athematic stem *man- “hand”, with a shift from “handy” to “handicapped”.[4] Wiktionary reconstructs Proto-Indo-European *mh₂n-ko- (“maimed in the hand”).[1]

Earliest recorded meaning

De Vaan and Köbler date it from Plautus, whose list “lame, blind, dumb, maimed, crippled” describes a useless servant.[4][5][2] Köbler dates Plautus c. 250–184 BC.[5]

Semantic evolution

It meant having a useless hand, maimed or crippled, and by transfer feeble, defective or incomplete, as Cicero says knowledge would be maimed and unfinished without action.[2][6] Livy uses it of a man maimed in battle.[6]

In the Romance languages it came to mean “lacking”: Italian manco, Spanish manco “one-handed”, and French manquer “to lack”, from which English manqué came.[1][5] German Manko “deficit” comes from Italian.[5]

Timeline

  • c. 250–184 BC – Plautus lists it with lame, blind and dumb.[2][5]
  • c. 180–102 BC – Lucilius uses it.[2][5]
  • 81–43 BC – Cicero speaks of maimed knowledge.[2][5]

Meanings

Adjective

  1. Maimed (in the hand), crippled.[2]
  2. Feeble, defective, incomplete.[2][6]

References

  1. ^ a b c d e Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
  2. ^ a b c d e f g h 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. ^ a b 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 g Köbler, Gerhard (2010), Lateinisches Abkunfts- und Wirkungswörterbuch für Altertum und Mittelalter, online ed., koeblergerhard.de
  6. ^ a b c Gaffiot, Félix (2016), Dictionnaire latin-français, new ed. by Gérard Gréco et al. (Gaffiot 2016), online ed.
Cite this entry

“Mancus.” Etymologically, 16 Oct. 2026, etymologically.com/la/mancus. Accessed 16 Oct. 2026.

Last edited on . ·