Etymologically
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pictor

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Pronunciation

  • Classical: [ˈpɪk.tɔr][1]
  • Ecclesiastical: [ˈpik.tor][1]

Forms

pictor m (genitive pictōris); third declension[1]

Etymology

It is from Latin pingō (“to paint”) + -tor.[2][1][3] De Vaan traces pingō to Proto-Italic *ping-e/o- (“to paint”) and Proto-Indo-European *pi-n-ḱ- (“to paint, adorn”), a nasal present.[4] He compares Sanskrit पिंशति (piṃśati, “to adorn, carve out”), Ancient Greek ποικίλος (poikílos, “multicoloured”), Lithuanian piẽšti (“to draw lines, adorn”) and Tocharian B piṅkeṃ (“they paint, write”).[4]

Earliest recorded meaning

De Vaan and Köbler date it from Plautus; the TLL counts four uses in his plays and finds it rare in poetry.[4][5][3]

Semantic evolution

It is the usual word for a painter, in Cicero, Horace, Juvenal and Pliny the Elder's books on painting.[6] Inscriptions spell it ⟨pinc-⟩ and ⟨pig-⟩, and abbreviate it ⟨pict⟩.[3] Corippus, in Late Latin, uses it of an embroiderer.[6]

Timeline

  • c. 250–184 BC – Plautus uses it.[4][3][5]
  • 81–43 BC – Cicero of painters.[6][5]
  • 23/24–79 AD – Pliny the Elder writes about painters.[6][5]

Meanings

Noun

  1. A painter.[2][6][7][1]
  2. (Late Latin) An embroiderer.[6][1]

Word family

  • pictōrius

Usage notes

Pictor is also a cognomen of the gens Fabia, borne above all by Quintus Fabius Pictor, the historian of the time of the Second Punic War.[2][6]

References

  1. ^ a b c d e f 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 Thesaurus linguae Latinae (1900–), Leipzig: Teubner; Berlin: De Gruyter; open-access ed., Munich: Bayerische Akademie der Wissenschaften
  4. ^ a b c d 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 Köbler, Gerhard (2010), Lateinisches Abkunfts- und Wirkungswörterbuch für Altertum und Mittelalter, online ed., koeblergerhard.de
  6. ^ a b c d e f g Lewis, Charlton T.; Short, Charles (1879), A Latin Dictionary, Oxford: Clarendon Press
  7. ^ Stelten, Leo F. (1995), Dictionary of Ecclesiastical Latin, Peabody, Mass.: Hendrickson