marmor

Forms

marmor n (genitive marmoris); third declension^[1]

Etymology

It is borrowed from Ancient Greek μάρμαρος (mármaros, “boulder; marble”), a word for a rock that later meant white stone and marble.^[2][3][1] The TLL compares the ending with that of aequor.^[3] Köbler compares the root Proto-Indo-European *mer- (“to rub, crush”).^[4]

Earliest recorded meaning

Köbler gives Ennius as its first author.^[4] In the Annals it is the whitened sea: “the blue foams with the yellow marble, struck by the crowded ship”.^[2]

Semantic evolution

The poets' use for the surface of the sea, as Ennius' and Virgil's “Libyan marble”, seems to imitate Homer's “gleaming sea”.^[2][3] In prose it is marble, a block of it or a variety, as Seneca's “variety of marbles”, and Cato already has powdered marble for flavouring wine.^[2] It is anything made of marble: a statue, as Horace's “silver and old marble”, a monument, a marble pavement in Seneca, a vessel in Phaedrus, and in Martial a milestone.^[2][5] In Ovid it is stone produced by transformation, as bodies turned to marble.^[2]

An imperial freedman a marmoribus was in charge of the supply of marble.^[2] Church Latin glosses it “marble”.^[6]

Timeline

• 204–169 BC – Ennius of the sea.^[2][4]
• 234–149 BC – Cato of marble dust in wine.^[2][4]
• 81–43 BC – Cicero of a block of marble.^[2][4]
• 65–8 BC – Horace of marble statues.^[2][4]
• early 14th century – Borrowed into English, by way of Old French, as marble.^[7]

Meanings

Noun

1. Marble; a block or variety of marble.^[2][1][5]
2. Marble dust.^[2][1]
3. A thing made of marble: a statue, a monument, a pavement (plural), a vessel; a milestone.^[2][1]
4. Stone (especially produced by transformation).^[2]
5. (poetic) The whitened surface of the sea; the sea.^[2][1]

Word family

• marmorārius
• marmorātum
• marmoreus
• marmorō
• marmorōsus
• marmusculum

Related words

• marmorātiō
• English marble

References

1. ^ a b c d e f g h Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p Glare, P. G. W., ed. (2012), Oxford Latin Dictionary, 2nd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
3. ^ a b c Thesaurus linguae Latinae (1900–), Leipzig: Teubner; Berlin: De Gruyter; open-access ed., Munich: Bayerische Akademie der Wissenschaften
4. ^ a b c d e f Köbler, Gerhard (2010), Lateinisches Abkunfts- und Wirkungswörterbuch für Altertum und Mittelalter, online ed., koeblergerhard.de
5. ^ a b Lewis, Charlton T.; Short, Charles (1879), A Latin Dictionary, Oxford: Clarendon Press
6. ^ Stelten, Leo F. (1995), Dictionary of Ecclesiastical Latin, Peabody, Mass.: Hendrickson
7. ^ Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com