mulierarius

Forms

mulierārius (feminine mulierāria, neuter mulierārium); first/second-declension adjective^[1]

Etymology

It is from Latin mulier (“woman”) + -ārius.^[2][1][3] The noun mulier was originally an s-stem, as muliebris shows; an older etymology explains it as a comparative formed on the stem of mollis (“soft, weak”).^[4]

Earliest recorded meaning

Its first author is Cicero (81–43 BC),^[5] who in the speech for Caelius speaks of a mulieraria manus, a band of men in a woman's service,^[2][6] which the TLL and Lewis & Short take as the band devoted to Clodia.^[3][6]

Semantic evolution

In the Historia Augusta, Trebellius Pollio has it of a lust for pleasure with women.^[3][6] Used as a noun, it meant a man given to women, a womanizer: Capitolinus has it in his life of Albinus.^[6][7] In Catullus it rests only on a conjecture of Haupt, where the manuscripts read something like mulier aries.^[3][6] Isidore of Seville says that a man devoted to women, a femellarius, was called mulierarius by the ancients,^[3][6] and a scholiast on Horace uses it to gloss scortator “fornicator”.^[3]

Timeline

• 81–43 BC – Cicero speaks of a band of men in a woman's service.^[2][3][5]
• c. 560–636 AD – Isidore of Seville says the ancients called a womanizer mulierarius.^[3][6][5]

Meanings

Adjective

1. Subservient or devoted to a woman.^[2][3]
2. Of or relating to women, especially of pleasure with women.^[6][3]

Noun

1. A man given to women, a womanizer.^[6][7][3]

References

1. ^ a b c d Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d Glare, P. G. W., ed. (2012), Oxford Latin Dictionary, 2nd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
3. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k Thesaurus linguae Latinae (1900–), Leipzig: Teubner; Berlin: De Gruyter; open-access ed., Munich: Bayerische Akademie der Wissenschaften
4. ^ 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 Köbler, Gerhard (2010), Lateinisches Abkunfts- und Wirkungswörterbuch für Altertum und Mittelalter, online ed., koeblergerhard.de
6. ^ a b c d e f g h i Lewis, Charlton T.; Short, Charles (1879), A Latin Dictionary, Oxford: Clarendon Press
7. ^ a b Georges, Karl Ernst (1913–1918), Ausführliches lateinisch-deutsches Handwörterbuch, 8th ed., ed. Heinrich Georges, Hannover; Leipzig: Hahn