Etymologically
Log in

navicularius

This is the current revision of this entry, as edited by bogdan on 20 October 2026 at 19:49. This address is a permanent link to this version.
Changes in this edit History

Pronunciation

  • Classical: [naː.wɪ.kʊˈɫaː.ri.ʊs][1]
  • Ecclesiastical: [na.vi.kuˈlaː.ri.us][1]

Forms

nāviculārius (feminine nāviculāria, neuter nāviculārium); first/second-declension adjective[1] The spellings nāviclārius and nauclārius also occur.[2][3]

Etymology

It is from Latin nāvicula (“small ship”) + -ārius.[2][3] nāvicula is a diminutive of nāvis (“ship”), which goes back to Proto-Indo-European *neh₂-u- (“ship”).[4]

Earliest recorded meaning

De Vaan and the TLL record it first in Varro's Menippean Satires, where a nāviculārius, a shipowner, bursts into the senate house.[4][3]

Semantic evolution

In Classical Latin it is mostly a noun, the owner of a merchant ship who carried goods for hire, often named beside the merchants: Cicero recalls that the ancestors often went to war when Roman merchants or shipowners had been wronged.[3][5] The feminine nāviculāria meant the shipping business itself, in Cicero's phrase nāviculāriam facere.[5][6]

Inscriptions of the imperial period name many such shipowners, and a scholiast on Cicero explains them as those who carried grain.[3] In the late law codes the adjective means “of shipping” or “of shipowners”, as in the onus nāviculārium, the duty laid on them.[5][6] Ecclesiastical Latin uses the adjective for “of small boats”.[7]

Timeline

  • 116–27 BC – Varro uses it for a shipowner.[4][3][8]
  • 81–43 BC – Cicero names shipowners beside merchants, and uses nāviculāria for the shipping trade.[5][8]
  • 98–115 AD – Tacitus uses the word.[5][8]
  • 438 AD – The Theodosian Code uses the adjective for the shipowners' burden.[5][8]

Meanings

Noun

  1. A shipowner who carries goods or passengers for hire.[2][5]
  2. (feminine, nāviculāria) The shipping business.[5][6]

Adjective

  1. (Late Latin) Of ships or shipowners.[5][6]

References

  1. ^ a b c Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
  2. ^ a b c Glare, P. G. W., ed. (2012), Oxford Latin Dictionary, 2nd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
  3. ^ a b c d e f Thesaurus linguae Latinae (1900–), Leipzig: Teubner; Berlin: De Gruyter; open-access ed., Munich: Bayerische Akademie der Wissenschaften
  4. ^ a b c 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 d e f g h i Lewis, Charlton T.; Short, Charles (1879), A Latin Dictionary, Oxford: Clarendon Press
  6. ^ a b c d Georges, Karl Ernst (1913–1918), Ausführliches lateinisch-deutsches Handwörterbuch, 8th ed., ed. Heinrich Georges, Hannover; Leipzig: Hahn
  7. ^ Stelten, Leo F. (1995), Dictionary of Ecclesiastical Latin, Peabody, Mass.: Hendrickson
  8. ^ a b c d Köbler, Gerhard (2010), Lateinisches Abkunfts- und Wirkungswörterbuch für Altertum und Mittelalter, online ed., koeblergerhard.de