musteus

Forms

musteus (feminine mustea, neuter musteum); first/second-declension adjective^[1]

Etymology

It is formed from Latin mustum (“must, new wine”) + -eus.^[2][3] De Vaan finds mustum from Cato on, beside the adjective mustus (“new, fresh”); he notes that mustus could in theory come from a root Proto-Indo-European *mud- (“to be cheerful”), but finds the semantic connection quite gratuitous.^[4]

Earliest recorded meaning

Georges cites a comedy of Naevius (c. 235–200 BC)^[5][6] in which it is said of a girl, meaning fresh or young; the OLD's first example is in Cato's De agricultura, of a kind of quince.^[2][6]

Semantic evolution

The basic sense is like must, fresh and juicy: Varro has it, Columella of honey still fermenting, Pliny the Elder of fresh cheese and Martial.^[2][7] Pliny the Younger calls a book still in its early stages musteus.^[2] As a name it marked a quince (and a pear) that ripened quickly;^[2][7] Pliny says these were later called melimela.^[2][7]

It lives on in Romance: the TLL lists Italian moscio and Catalan moix,^[3] and Wiktionary adds Spanish mozo and Portuguese moço.^[1]

Timeline

• c. 235–200 BC – Naevius uses it of a young woman.^[5][6]
• 234–149 BC – Cato names quinces and pears mustea.^[2][6]
• 23/24–79 AD – Pliny the Elder uses it of fresh cheese.^[2][6]

Meanings

Adjective

1. Of or like must; fresh, juicy.^[2][7]
2. (figurative) New, fresh; of a book, not yet mature.^[2][7]
3. Of a variety of quince or pear that ripens early.^[2]

References

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