pappus

Forms

pappus m (genitive pappī); second declension; also Greek nominative ⟨pappos⟩, and the spelling ⟨papus⟩.^[1][2][3]

Etymology

It is borrowed from Ancient Greek πάππος (páppos, “grandfather”).^[1][4][2][5] Köbler connects the Greek word with the nursery word Proto-Indo-European *pappa (“father; food”).^[5][6]

Earliest recorded meaning

Its first dated author is Lucretius, who speaks of plūmās avium papposque volantīs, “birds' feathers and flying thistledown”.^[1][7][2] The Atellan farces of Pomponius, whose date Köbler does not give, already had a stock character Pappus, the old man, in titles such as Pappus agricola and Sponsa Pappī.^[2]

Semantic evolution

Varro explains that in some Atellan farces pappus means an old man, whom the Oscans call casnar.^[2][3][8] From the old man of the farce the sense passed to “grandfather”, as in Ausonius, who speaks of grandchildren preferring their trembling pappī and grandmothers to their fathers.^[3][2][7] The TLL notes Old Provençal ⟨pap⟩ “grandfather”.^[2]

As a plant word Festus glosses it as the flowers of thistles,^[2][4] and Pliny the Elder uses the Greek form ⟨pappos⟩ for the down of a seed and pappus for a plant, groundsel, which others called acanthis.^[1][2][4] Medieval British glossaries keep it for the thistle.^[9]

Timeline

• 96–55 BC – Lucretius uses it of flying thistledown.^[1][7]
• 116–27 BC – Varro explains it as the old man of the Atellan farce.^[2][3]
• 23/24–79 AD – Pliny the Elder uses it of seed down and of groundsel.^[1][4]
• c. 310–394 AD – Ausonius uses it of grandfathers.^[3][2]

Meanings

Noun

1. The white down on certain seeds, thistledown.^[1][4][7]
2. groundsel, Senecio vulgaris.^[1][4]
3. An old man; the old man of the Atellan farce.^[1][2]
4. A grandfather.^[4][3][7]
5. (Medieval Latin) The thistle.^[9]

Related words

• avus

References

1. ^ a b c d e f g h i Glare, P. G. W., ed. (2012), Oxford Latin Dictionary, 2nd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
2. ^ 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
3. ^ a b c d e f Georges, Karl Ernst (1913–1918), Ausführliches lateinisch-deutsches Handwörterbuch, 8th ed., ed. Heinrich Georges, Hannover; Leipzig: Hahn
4. ^ a b c d e f g Lewis, Charlton T.; Short, Charles (1879), A Latin Dictionary, Oxford: Clarendon Press
5. ^ a b Köbler, Gerhard (2010), Lateinisches Abkunfts- und Wirkungswörterbuch für Altertum und Mittelalter, online ed., koeblergerhard.de
6. ^ Pokorny, Julius (1959), Indogermanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, Bern; Munich: Francke
7. ^ a b c d e Conte, Gian Biagio; Pianezzola, Emilio; Ranucci, Giuliano (2010), il Latino: Vocabolario della lingua latina, 3rd ed., Florence: Le Monnier
8. ^ Marcus Terentius Varro, De lingua Latina (text of The Latin Library; book and paragraph numbers as there).
9. ^ a b Latham, R. E., D. R. Howlett, R. K. Ashdowne, et al. (1975–2013), Dictionary of Medieval Latin from British Sources, London: British Academy / Oxford University Press