paupulo

Forms

paupulō (present infinitive paupulāre, perfect active paupulāvī, supine paupulātum); first conjugation, no passive^[1]

Etymology

It is an imitation of the peacock's cry, with the same opening ⟨pau-⟩ as in pāvō “peacock”.^[2] Wiktionary calls it possibly onomatopoeic and reports Du Cange's view that it blends a cry ⟨pau⟩ with ululō “to howl”.^[1]

Earliest recorded meaning

Suetonius, in a fragment listing the sounds of animals, gives it as the cry of peacocks: pavonum est paupulare (“peacocks paupulate”).^[2][3]

Semantic evolution

It stayed a word of the lists of animal cries: besides Suetonius it appears in a late poem of the Latin Anthology on the voices of birds and beasts.^[3][4] Later copies of these lists spell it paupolare, pupulare or paululare.^[2]

Timeline

• c. 75–150 AD – Suetonius names it as the cry of the peacock.^[2][3][5]

Meanings

Verb

1. (intransitive, of a peacock) To utter its natural cry.^[6][3][4]

References

1. ^ a b c d Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d Thesaurus linguae Latinae (1900–), Leipzig: Teubner; Berlin: De Gruyter; open-access ed., Munich: Bayerische Akademie der Wissenschaften
3. ^ a b c d Georges, Karl Ernst (1913–1918), Ausführliches lateinisch-deutsches Handwörterbuch, 8th ed., ed. Heinrich Georges, Hannover; Leipzig: Hahn
4. ^ a b Gaffiot, Félix (2016), Dictionnaire latin-français, new ed. by Gérard Gréco et al. (Gaffiot 2016), online ed.
5. ^ Köbler, Gerhard (2010), Lateinisches Abkunfts- und Wirkungswörterbuch für Altertum und Mittelalter, online ed., koeblergerhard.de
6. ^ Glare, P. G. W., ed. (2012), Oxford Latin Dictionary, 2nd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press