moechus
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Forms
moechus m (genitive moechī, feminine moecha); second declension[1] An inscription has the vocative moice;[2][3] moecus is also found.[2][3]
Etymology
It is borrowed from Ancient Greek μοιχός (moikhós, “adulterer”).[2][4][1] Köbler mentions, with a question mark, Pokorny's root Proto-Indo-European *meyǵʰ- (“to urinate”) for the Greek word.[5]
Earliest recorded meaning
Köbler dates it from Plautus, whose Miles Gloriosus calls a man a great womaniser.[5][4]
Semantic evolution
It is an adulterer or fornicator, in Terence, Horace and Juvenal.[4] A grammarian insists that the word for adulterer is spelled with ⟨oe⟩, but inscriptions have the vocative ⟨moice⟩ and the spellings ⟨moecus⟩ and ⟨moeccus⟩ occur;[2][3] Catullus has the feminine vocative ⟨moeca⟩.[2][3] Church Latin glosses it adulterer.[6]
Timeline
- c. 250–184 BC – Plautus of a womaniser.[4][5]
- 190–159 BC – Terence uses it.[4][5]
- 65–8 BC – Horace uses it.[4][5]
- c. 67–c. 127 AD – Juvenal uses it.[4][5]
Meanings
Noun
Word family
- moecha
- moechimōnium
- moechor
Related words
- moechas
- moechissō
References
- ^ a b c Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
- ^ a b c d e f Glare, P. G. W., ed. (2012), Oxford Latin Dictionary, 2nd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
- ^ a b c d Thesaurus linguae Latinae (1900–), Leipzig: Teubner; Berlin: De Gruyter; open-access ed., Munich: Bayerische Akademie der Wissenschaften
- ^ a b c d e f g h Lewis, Charlton T.; Short, Charles (1879), A Latin Dictionary, Oxford: Clarendon Press
- ^ a b c d e f Köbler, Gerhard (2010), Lateinisches Abkunfts- und Wirkungswörterbuch für Altertum und Mittelalter, online ed., koeblergerhard.de
- ^ a b Stelten, Leo F. (1995), Dictionary of Ecclesiastical Latin, Peabody, Mass.: Hendrickson