pauculus

Forms

pauculus (feminine paucula, neuter pauculum); first/second-declension adjective^[1]

Etymology

It is from Latin paucus (“few”) + -ulus, a diminutive.^[1][2][3] De Vaan traces paucus to Proto-Italic *pauko- (“few”) and Proto-Indo-European *peh₂u-, the root of parvus (“small”).^[4]

Earliest recorded meaning

The TLL reads it from Plautus, Cato and Terence on.^[5] In the Truculentus a speaker promises to make someone admit within a very few days that he is a tough man.^[1]

Semantic evolution

It is usually plural and means very few, only a small number, as in Plautus,^[1] or a few: Plautus has verbīs pauculīs, "in a few words", Cato speaks of a very few friends, and Terence has someone say a few things.^[1][2] In the singular it means a little, not very much: Apuleius has post pauculum tempus, "after a short while".^[1] Lewis & Short call it mostly ante- and post-classical.^[2] The glosses explain it as paucissimus, "very few".^[5]

Timeline

• c. 250–184 BC – Plautus of a few days and a few words.^[1][5]
• 234–149 BC – Cato of a very few friends.^[2][5]
• 190–159 BC – Terence.^[2][5]
• c. 125–175 AD – Apuleius of a short while.^[1]

Meanings

Adjective

1. (plural) Very few, only a few; a few.^[1][2]
2. (singular) Very little, not much.^[1][2]

Related words

• paucus
• paulus
• pauxillus

References

1. ^ a b c d e f g h i j Glare, P. G. W., ed. (2012), Oxford Latin Dictionary, 2nd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
2. ^ a b c d e f g Lewis, Charlton T.; Short, Charles (1879), A Latin Dictionary, Oxford: Clarendon Press
3. ^ Köbler, Gerhard (2010), Lateinisches Abkunfts- und Wirkungswörterbuch für Altertum und Mittelalter, online ed., koeblergerhard.de
4. ^ 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 Thesaurus linguae Latinae (1900–), Leipzig: Teubner; Berlin: De Gruyter; open-access ed., Munich: Bayerische Akademie der Wissenschaften