ovarius

Forms

ōvārius m (genitive ōvāriī or ōvārī); second declension^[1][2]

Etymology

It is from Latin ōvum (“egg”) + -ārius.^[1][3][2]

Earliest recorded meaning

The noun is known from one inscription, in which a man named Marcius Argentilus is called ovarius;^[3][2] the one inscription with this form, from Mevania in Umbria, is dated AD 1–30.^[4] What the title meant is uncertain: Lewis & Short take it as a keeper of new-laid eggs,^[5] Gaffiot as the slave in charge of the poultry yard,^[6] and the OLD as perhaps the operator of the ovarium, the stand holding the eggs used to count the laps of a chariot race.^[1][3]

Semantic evolution

The TLL leaves open whether he looked after eggs in an aviary or in the circus.^[3] As an adjective, “of eggs”, the word is found in the glossaries, said of birds.^[3][2][7] The neuter ōvārium is the circus structure for the eggs.^[1][3]

Timeline

• 1–30 AD – An inscription from Mevania names an ovarius.^[4][3]
• 227 AD – An African inscription records the neuter ovarium in the circus.^[3]

Meanings

Noun

1. A keeper of eggs: perhaps the operator of the egg counters in the circus, or a slave in charge of the poultry.^[1][5][6][3]

Adjective

1. Of or for eggs.^[2][7][3]

References

1. ^ a b c d e Glare, P. G. W., ed. (2012), Oxford Latin Dictionary, 2nd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
2. ^ a b c d e Georges, Karl Ernst (1913–1918), Ausführliches lateinisch-deutsches Handwörterbuch, 8th ed., ed. Heinrich Georges, Hannover; Leipzig: Hahn
3. ^ a b c d e f g h i j Thesaurus linguae Latinae (1900–), Leipzig: Teubner; Berlin: De Gruyter; open-access ed., Munich: Bayerische Akademie der Wissenschaften
4. ^ a b Kaše, Vojtěch; Heřmánková, Petra; Sobotková, Adéla et al. (2024), LIST: Latin Inscriptions in Space and Time, v1.2 (EDCS + EDH), Aarhus: SDAM, doi:10.5281/zenodo.10473706
5. ^ a b Lewis, Charlton T.; Short, Charles (1879), A Latin Dictionary, Oxford: Clarendon Press
6. ^ a b Gaffiot, Félix (2016), Dictionnaire latin-français, new ed. by Gérard Gréco et al. (Gaffiot 2016), online ed.
7. ^ a b Köbler, Gerhard (2010), Lateinisches Abkunfts- und Wirkungswörterbuch für Altertum und Mittelalter, online ed., koeblergerhard.de