marmoreus

Forms

marmoreus (feminine marmorea, neuter marmoreum); first/second-declension adjective^[1] Inscriptions also have marmorius and marmur-.^[2]

Etymology

It is from Latin marmor (“marble”) + -eus, an adjective of material.^[3][2][1] The noun marmor was borrowed from Ancient Greek μάρμαρος (mármaros, “marble”).^[1]

Earliest recorded meaning

Köbler's first source is Lucilius;^[4] the OLD also cites a fragment of the Cypria Ilias ascribed to Naevius for a “marble neck”.^[3]

Semantic evolution

It means made of marble, as in Cicero's statues of bronze, marble or ivory and in an old inscription of a statue.^[3][5] It is also proper to marble, as Lucretius' “marble whiteness”; already in the earliest poetry it means like marble, especially in whiteness, of the human body.^[3]

Church Latin glosses it “of marble”.^[6]

Timeline

• c. 180–102 BC – Lucilius.^[4]
• 96–55 BC – Lucretius of marble whiteness.^[3][4]
• 81–43 BC – Cicero of marble statues.^[5][4]
• 1723 – English marmoreal is formed from it.^[7]

Meanings

Adjective

1. Made of marble.^[3][5][1]
2. Of or proper to marble.^[3]
3. Like marble, especially in whiteness; marble-white.^[3][5][1]

Related words

• marmor
• English marmoreal

References

1. ^ a b c d e f g Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b Thesaurus linguae Latinae (1900–), Leipzig: Teubner; Berlin: De Gruyter; open-access ed., Munich: Bayerische Akademie der Wissenschaften
3. ^ a b c d e f g h Glare, P. G. W., ed. (2012), Oxford Latin Dictionary, 2nd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
4. ^ a b c d Köbler, Gerhard (2010), Lateinisches Abkunfts- und Wirkungswörterbuch für Altertum und Mittelalter, online ed., koeblergerhard.de
5. ^ a b c d 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