phoca

Forms

phōca f (genitive phōcae); first declension^[1] The Greek form phōcē (genitive phōcēs) is also used.^[2][3]

Etymology

It is borrowed from Ancient Greek φώκη (phṓkē, “seal”).^[2][1][4] Beekes calls the Greek word, found from Homer on, isolated, and thinks that the name of a sea animal may well be Pre-Greek.^[5]

Earliest recorded meaning

Its first known use is in Virgil's Georgics, where seals flee into the rivers.^[6][7][8]

Semantic evolution

It is a poetic word from Virgil and Ovid on, used in prose by Pliny the Elder, Solinus and Servius.^[6] The native Latin name was vitulus marīnus, “sea calf”: Pliny the Elder writes that the sea calves called phōcae breathe and sleep on land.^[6][3] Ovid has ugly seals lying on the mountains in the flood, and tells of a grandson of Cephisus whom Apollo changed into a seal.^[3][6] Valerius Flaccus has Proteus drive a team of seals over the sea.^[3][7] Manilius says that people born under the constellation Cetus will shut seals in pens.^[6]

In medieval British sources it named the seal and also, by confusion, the porpoise and a kind of flatfish;^[9] Gerald of Wales says he saw seals raise their bodies above the waves at the sound of a harp.^[9] Wiktionary lists foca, phoque and foca among the Romance words that continue or borrow it.^[1]

Timeline

• 70–19 BC – Virgil uses it in the Georgics.^[6][7][8]
• 43 BC–18 AD – Ovid writes of seals on the mountains in the flood.^[3][6][8]
• 23/24–79 AD – Pliny the Elder names the seals “sea calves”.^[6][8]
• first half of 3rd century AD – Solinus says seals are almost the only large sea beast in the Black Sea.^[6][8]

Meanings

Noun

1. A seal (the animal).^[2][3]
2. (Medieval Latin) A porpoise; a flounder.^[9]

Related words

• vitulus

References

1. ^ a b c d e Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c Glare, P. G. W., ed. (2012), Oxford Latin Dictionary, 2nd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
3. ^ a b c d e f Lewis, Charlton T.; Short, Charles (1879), A Latin Dictionary, Oxford: Clarendon Press
4. ^ Saalfeld, Günther Alexander (1874), Index Graecorum vocabulorum in linguam latinam translatorum, Berlin: Weidmann
5. ^ Beekes, Robert S. P. (2010), Etymological Dictionary of Greek, with the assistance of Lucien van Beek, Leiden Indo-European Etymological Dictionary Series 10, Leiden; Boston: Brill
6. ^ a b c d e f g h i Thesaurus linguae Latinae (1900–), Leipzig: Teubner; Berlin: De Gruyter; open-access ed., Munich: Bayerische Akademie der Wissenschaften
7. ^ a b c Georges, Karl Ernst (1913–1918), Ausführliches lateinisch-deutsches Handwörterbuch, 8th ed., ed. Heinrich Georges, Hannover; Leipzig: Hahn
8. ^ a b c d e Köbler, Gerhard (2010), Lateinisches Abkunfts- und Wirkungswörterbuch für Altertum und Mittelalter, online ed., koeblergerhard.de
9. ^ a b c 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