plancus

Forms

plancus (feminine planca, neuter plancum); first/second-declension adjective^[1]

Etymology

The origin is uncertain.^[2][3] The TLL reports Ferdinand de Saussure's view that it is from Latin plānus¹ (“flat”), with a suffix as in ūnicus and petulcus, and that the original sense “broad, flat” was narrowed to the feet.^[2] The OLD compares Ancient Greek πλάξ (pláx, “flat surface”),^[3] and Wiktionary and Köbler trace it to the root Proto-Indo-European *pleh₂- (“wide and flat”), the root of plānus.^[1][4]

Earliest recorded meaning

The adjective is recorded only by Festus and in glossaries, which render it with Greek words for “flat-footed”.^[2][5][4] It is older as a cognomen: Cicero names men called Plancus.^[4]

Semantic evolution

Festus, in Paul the Deacon's epitome, explains that boards were called plancae because they were flat, and that people with excessively flat feet were called planci for the same reason.^[5][2] Pliny the Elder lists Plancus among the Roman cognomina taken from the shape of the foot, beside Plautus and Scaurus.^[5][6]

Timeline

• 81–43 BC – Cicero names men with the cognomen Plancus.^[4]
• 23/24–79 AD – Pliny the Elder counts Plancus among cognomina taken from the feet.^[5][4]
• 2nd half of the 2nd century AD – Festus explains planci as people with very flat feet.^[2][4]

Meanings

Adjective

1. Flat-footed.^[3][7][1]

Word family

• planca

Usage notes

As a cognomen, Plancus belonged above all to a family of the gens Munatia.^[6][1] Pliny the Elder uses plancus as the name of a kind of eagle, rendering Ancient Greek πλάγκος (plánkos);^[5] Wiktionary treats it as a form of plangus.^[1] Medieval Latin also had plancus for a plank or landing stage and a measure of land, a form of planca.^[4]

References

1. ^ a b c d e f g Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e Thesaurus linguae Latinae (1900–), Leipzig: Teubner; Berlin: De Gruyter; open-access ed., Munich: Bayerische Akademie der Wissenschaften
3. ^ a b c Glare, P. G. W., ed. (2012), Oxford Latin Dictionary, 2nd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
4. ^ a b c d e f g Köbler, Gerhard (2010), Lateinisches Abkunfts- und Wirkungswörterbuch für Altertum und Mittelalter, online ed., koeblergerhard.de
5. ^ a b c d e Lewis, Charlton T.; Short, Charles (1879), A Latin Dictionary, Oxford: Clarendon Press
6. ^ a b Georges, Karl Ernst (1913–1918), Ausführliches lateinisch-deutsches Handwörterbuch, 8th ed., ed. Heinrich Georges, Hannover; Leipzig: Hahn
7. ^ Gaffiot, Félix (2016), Dictionnaire latin-français, new ed. by Gérard Gréco et al. (Gaffiot 2016), online ed.