muscus
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Forms
mūscus m (genitive mūscī); second declension[1]
Etymology
It is inherited from Proto-Indo-European *mews-,[1][2] cognate with Old High German mos, English moss and Lithuanian musaĩ.[3]
Earliest recorded meaning
It is found first in Cato.[2][4]
Semantic evolution
It means moss or a similar growth:[3] Horace has rocks coated with moss, and Ovid soft moss.[4]
Timeline
- 234–149 BC – Cato uses it.[2][4]
- 65–8 BC – Horace has rocks coated with moss.[4][2]
- 43 BC–18 AD – Ovid writes of soft moss.[4][2]
Meanings
Noun
Word family
Usage notes
A separate Late Latin muscus, “musk”, is borrowed from Ancient Greek μόσχος (móskhos), a word the TLL calls of Asian origin; it is found first in Jerome.[5][4][2] Medieval Latin also used it of muscatel wine.[6] English musk came partly from it, and muscat from a Vulgar Latin derivative.[7]
References
- ^ a b Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
- ^ a b c d e f Köbler, Gerhard (2010), Lateinisches Abkunfts- und Wirkungswörterbuch für Altertum und Mittelalter, online ed., koeblergerhard.de
- ^ a b c Glare, P. G. W., ed. (2012), Oxford Latin Dictionary, 2nd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
- ^ a b c d e f g Lewis, Charlton T.; Short, Charles (1879), A Latin Dictionary, Oxford: Clarendon Press
- ^ Thesaurus linguae Latinae (1900–), Leipzig: Teubner; Berlin: De Gruyter; open-access ed., Munich: Bayerische Akademie der Wissenschaften
- ^ Niermeyer, J. F. (1976), Mediae Latinitatis Lexicon Minus, Leiden: Brill
- ^ Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com