mutulus

Pronunciation

• Classical: [ˈmuː.tʊ.ɫʊs]^[1]
• Ecclesiastical: [ˈmuː.tu.lus]^[1]

Forms

mūtulus m (genitive mūtulī); second declension^[1] The quantity of the first syllable is uncertain.^[2][3]

Etymology

The origin is uncertain.^[4] It is perhaps from Etruscan.^[2][1][5]

The TLL lists Italian mucchio (“heap”) and dialect forms of northern Italy and Romansh among its descendants.^[4]

Earliest recorded meaning

It first appears in Varro's work on farming, of brackets set on the columns of an aviary as perches for the birds,^[4][6] in the 1st century BC.^[5]

Semantic evolution

In Varro the brackets also hold the beehives on a wall.^[4] Vitruvius made it a term of architecture: the mutules, slabs projecting under the corona of a cornice, which he explains as copies in stone of the projecting ends of rafters.^[4][2] It also appears in a building law from Puteoli and in an inscription (CIL VI 103).^[4]

Timeline

• 116–27 BC – Varro uses it of brackets in aviaries and for beehives.^[4][5]
• c. 84–c. 25 BC – Vitruvius uses it of the mutules of a cornice.^[4][5]
• 1st century AD – Columella uses it of brackets fixed along a wall.^[4][5]

Meanings

Noun

1. A projecting shelf or bracket.^[2][4]
2. (architecture) A mutule or modillion, a projecting slab under the corona of a cornice.^[2][7][8]

Usage notes

Varro, as Servius reports, explained the mutuli of buildings as the heads of beams.^[4] Some editions of Cato have mutulus as a form of mitulus, the mussel.^[6][8] A separate rare mutulus, from mutus, “quite mute”, is found on a curse tablet of the 2nd or 3rd century AD.^[4][5]

References

1. ^ a b c d Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e Glare, P. G. W., ed. (2012), Oxford Latin Dictionary, 2nd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
3. ^ Conte, Gian Biagio; Pianezzola, Emilio; Ranucci, Giuliano (2010), il Latino: Vocabolario della lingua latina, 3rd ed., Florence: Le Monnier
4. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l Thesaurus linguae Latinae (1900–), Leipzig: Teubner; Berlin: De Gruyter; open-access ed., Munich: Bayerische Akademie der Wissenschaften
5. ^ a b c d e f Köbler, Gerhard (2010), Lateinisches Abkunfts- und Wirkungswörterbuch für Altertum und Mittelalter, online ed., koeblergerhard.de
6. ^ a b Georges, Karl Ernst (1913–1918), Ausführliches lateinisch-deutsches Handwörterbuch, 8th ed., ed. Heinrich Georges, Hannover; Leipzig: Hahn
7. ^ Lewis, Charlton T.; Short, Charles (1879), A Latin Dictionary, Oxford: Clarendon Press
8. ^ a b Gaffiot, Félix (2016), Dictionnaire latin-français, new ed. by Gérard Gréco et al. (Gaffiot 2016), online ed.