Etymologically
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porrum

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Pronunciation

  • Classical: [ˈpɔr.rũː][1]
  • Ecclesiastical: [ˈpɔr.rum][1]

Forms

porrum n (genitive porrī); second declension[1] A masculine porrus, -ī is also found.[2][3][4]

Etymology

It is inherited from Proto-Italic *porso-, inherited from Proto-Indo-European *pr̥so-,[5][1] and corresponds to Ancient Greek πράσον (práson, “leek”).[5][2] Because botanists think that the leek originated in the Mediterranean and spread across Europe from Roman times, the Latin and Greek words have mostly been taken as an agricultural borrowing from a Mediterranean language;[5] the TLL holds that Greeks and Romans took the form separately from one unknown language.[4]

Weiss connects it instead with Proto-Indo-European *perso- (“ear of grain; sheath”), seen in Sanskrit पर्ष (parṣá-, “sheaf, bundle”) and Avestan parša- (“ear of corn”); de Vaan finds this formally attractive but asks how a leek could be named from an ear of grain or a sheath.[5][1] Wiktionary also lists Albanian presh as a cognate.[1]

Earliest recorded meaning

It is first found in Cato,[5][2] meaning the leek: the De agri cultura prescribes three shoots of leek (porri fibras iii) in a remedy.[2]

Semantic evolution

Columella and Pliny the Elder distinguish two kinds, the headed leek (porrum capitatum) and the cut leek (porrum sectivum or sectile), of which only the tops were eaten, the plant that Lewis and Short identify as chives.[2][3] Isidore of Seville repeats the two kinds.[6] Porrum nigrum was another plant, the black horehound (Greek ballōtē).[2] Martial and Juvenal mention the leek as everyday food.[3]

Timeline

  • 234–149 BC – Cato uses it in a remedy.[2][7]
  • 2nd half of the 1st century BC – The poem Moretum mentions it.[7]
  • 1st century AD – Columella describes the cut leek.[3][7]
  • 23/24–79 AD – Pliny the Elder names porrum nigrum.[2][7]
  • c. 560–636 AD – Isidore of Seville lists the two kinds of leek.[6][7]

Meanings

Noun

  1. A leek;[2][3][1] porrum sectivum (or sectile), a leek of which only the tops were eaten, chives.[2][3][1]
  2. porrum nigrum, the black horehound.[2]

Word family

  • porrāceus
  • porrīna

References

  1. ^ a b c d e f g h Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
  2. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k 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. ^ a b Thesaurus linguae Latinae (1900–), Leipzig: Teubner; Berlin: De Gruyter; open-access ed., Munich: Bayerische Akademie der Wissenschaften
  5. ^ a b c d e de Vaan, Michiel (2008), Etymological Dictionary of Latin and the other Italic Languages, Leiden Indo-European Etymological Dictionary Series 7, Leiden; Boston: Brill
  6. ^ a b Isidore of Seville, Etymologiarum sive Originum libri XX, ed. W. M. Lindsay (Oxford, 1911).
  7. ^ a b c d e Köbler, Gerhard (2010), Lateinisches Abkunfts- und Wirkungswörterbuch für Altertum und Mittelalter, online ed., koeblergerhard.de