paucitas

Forms

paucitās f (genitive paucitātis); third declension^[1]

Etymology

It is from Latin paucus + -tās, from the adjective “few”.^[2][3][4] De Vaan derives ⟨paucus⟩ from Proto-Italic *pauko- (“few”) and Proto-Indo-European *peh₂u-.^[5]

Earliest recorded meaning

Köbler dates it from Cicero,^[3] who writes from his province that there is a remarkable scarcity of panthers.^[2]

Semantic evolution

It is fewness or scarcity of number, as Cicero's paucity of orators and of friends and Caesar's lack of harbours, and in rhetoric the economy of a division with few heads.^[2][4] Concretely it is a small number or handful of people, as Livy's handful helped by the ground.^[2]

Church Latin glosses it “fewness, scarcity, paucity”.^[6]

Timeline

• 81–43 BC – Cicero of a scarcity of panthers and of orators.^[2][4][3]
• c. 50 BC – Caesar of a lack of harbours.^[4][3]
• 59 BC–17 AD – Livy of a small band.^[2][3]

Meanings

Noun

1. Fewness, scarcity, paucity.^[2][4][1][6]
2. A small number, handful.^[2]

Related words

• paucus
• paulus
• parvus

References

1. ^ a b c d Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f g h Glare, P. G. W., ed. (2012), Oxford Latin Dictionary, 2nd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
3. ^ a b c d e Köbler, Gerhard (2010), Lateinisches Abkunfts- und Wirkungswörterbuch für Altertum und Mittelalter, online ed., koeblergerhard.de
4. ^ a b c d e Lewis, Charlton T.; Short, Charles (1879), A Latin Dictionary, Oxford: Clarendon Press
5. ^ de Vaan, Michiel (2008), Etymological Dictionary of Latin and the other Italic Languages, Leiden Indo-European Etymological Dictionary Series 7, Leiden; Boston: Brill
6. ^ a b Stelten, Leo F. (1995), Dictionary of Ecclesiastical Latin, Peabody, Mass.: Hendrickson