olor

Forms

olor m (genitive olōris); third declension^[1]

Etymology

It is inherited from Proto-Italic *elō̆r, probably from an earlier ⟨*elōr⟩ with the regular change of /e/ to /o/ before a velarised /l/, though ⟨*olōr⟩ cannot be ruled out entirely.^[2] With Old Irish elu and Welsh alarch (“swan”) it goes back to an Italo-Celtic word for the swan.^[2][3][4] The words closest in form and meaning, Old High German albiz and the Slavic words for the swan, seem to go back to Proto-Indo-European *h2elbh-, the root of albus (“white”), but the Slavic accent does not match; de Vaan suggests that their ⟨*-bh-⟩ may be a suffix, and that if all these words share one word for the swan, it must have been borrowed into Indo-European from another language.^[2] Wiktionary traces it to *h₁el-, a name for a waterfowl,^[1] as Köbler does after Pokorny.^[5]

Isidore of Seville explained it from Greek ὅλος (hólos, “whole”), because the swan is “wholly white”.^[6][4]

Earliest recorded meaning

Köbler and the TLL find it first in Lucilius;^[5][4] de Vaan dates it from Virgil on,^[2] who has arguti olores, “clear-voiced swans”.^[7]

Semantic evolution

It is the swan, the Latin word beside the Greek loan cygnus;^[6][8] it is a word of poetry from Lucilius, Virgil, Horace and Propertius on, and rarer in prose, from Pliny the Elder, Suetonius and Apuleius.^[4][7] Ovid has the white swan singing at the shallows of the Maeander, and Pliny tells of the mournful song swans were said to sing at their death.^[7] In Manilius it is the constellation of the Swan, Cygnus.^[3]

It is still in the Church Latin vocabulary.^[9]

Timeline

• c. 180–102 BC – Lucilius uses it.^[4][5]
• 70–19 BC – Virgil writes of arguti olores.^[7][2][5]
• 43 BC–18 AD – Ovid has the white swan of the Maeander.^[7][5]
• 1st century AD – Manilius uses it for the constellation.^[3][5]
• 23/24–79 AD – Pliny the Elder uses it in prose and tells of the swan's death song.^[7][4][5]
• c. 560–636 AD – Isidore of Seville derives it from Greek “whole”.^[6][5]

Meanings

Noun

1. (chiefly poetic) A swan.^[3][7][1][9]
2. (astronomy) The constellation Cygnus.^[3]

Related words

• cygnus

Usage notes

A separate olor, “smell”, is an older and later form of odor;^[3][1] Varro says that odor was also said olor with one letter changed, whence olet and odorārī.^[7][8]

References

1. ^ a b c d e f Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e de Vaan, Michiel (2008), Etymological Dictionary of Latin and the other Italic Languages, Leiden Indo-European Etymological Dictionary Series 7, Leiden; Boston: Brill
3. ^ a b c d e f Glare, P. G. W., ed. (2012), Oxford Latin Dictionary, 2nd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
4. ^ a b c d e f Thesaurus linguae Latinae (1900–), Leipzig: Teubner; Berlin: De Gruyter; open-access ed., Munich: Bayerische Akademie der Wissenschaften
5. ^ a b c d e f g h Köbler, Gerhard (2010), Lateinisches Abkunfts- und Wirkungswörterbuch für Altertum und Mittelalter, online ed., koeblergerhard.de
6. ^ a b c Isidore of Seville, Etymologiarum sive Originum libri XX, ed. W. M. Lindsay (Oxford, 1911)., p. 12.7.18
7. ^ a b c d e f g h Lewis, Charlton T.; Short, Charles (1879), A Latin Dictionary, Oxford: Clarendon Press
8. ^ a b Georges, Karl Ernst (1913–1918), Ausführliches lateinisch-deutsches Handwörterbuch, 8th ed., ed. Heinrich Georges, Hannover; Leipzig: Hahn
9. ^ a b Stelten, Leo F. (1995), Dictionary of Ecclesiastical Latin, Peabody, Mass.: Hendrickson