psalterium

Forms

psaltērium n (genitive psaltēriī or psaltērī); second declension^[1]

Etymology

It is borrowed from Ancient Greek ψαλτήριον (psaltḗrion, “stringed instrument”),^[2][3][1] from ψάλλω (psállō, “to pluck a string with the fingers”), whose further origin is unclear.^[4][5]

Isidore derived it instead from psallere “to sing to the harp”.^[6][7]

Earliest recorded meaning

Its earliest record is in a speech of Scipio Aemilianus, for a stringed instrument of the harp or lute kind.^[8][9][4]

Semantic evolution

Varro, Cicero and Quintilian use it for the instrument, a kind of harp or lute.^[10][2] In the jurist Paulus it means, by metonymy, a mocking song.^[11]

In Christian Latin it came to mean the psalter, the Book of Psalms, and a book containing them;^[11][12][13] Niermeyer also records the senses “psalm-singing” and “the seven penitential psalms”.^[13] In late poets the e is sometimes scanned short.^[10][6] English took it twice: psaltery for the instrument, and psalter for the Book of Psalms.^[5]

Timeline

• 185/184–129 BC – Scipio Aemilianus mentions the instrument in a speech.^[8][9][4]
• 116–27 BC – Varro uses it in a fragment quoted by Nonius.^[10][4]
• 81–43 BC – Cicero mentions it in De haruspicum responso.^[10][4]
• c. 35–95/96 AD – Quintilian names it among musical instruments.^[10][4]
• 390–406 AD – The Vulgate uses it for the psaltery played in worship.^[10][4]
• c. 1300 – English borrows the instrument's name as psaltery, partly through Old French.^[5]

Meanings

Noun

1. A stringed instrument, a kind of harp or lute, the psaltery.^[2][10]
2. (Late Latin, law) A mocking song.^[11]
3. (Ecclesiastical Latin) The psalter, the Book of Psalms; a book of the psalms.^[12][13][11]
4. (Medieval Latin) Psalm-singing; the seven penitential psalms.^[13]

Related words

• English psalter
• English psaltery

References

1. ^ a b c d 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. ^ Saalfeld, Günther Alexander (1874), Index Graecorum vocabulorum in linguam latinam translatorum, Berlin: Weidmann
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 Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
6. ^ a b Thesaurus linguae Latinae (1900–), Leipzig: Teubner; Berlin: De Gruyter; open-access ed., Munich: Bayerische Akademie der Wissenschaften
7. ^ Isidore of Seville, Etymologiarum sive Originum libri XX, ed. W. M. Lindsay (Oxford, 1911).
8. ^ a b Conte, Gian Biagio; Pianezzola, Emilio; Ranucci, Giuliano (2010), il Latino: Vocabolario della lingua latina, 3rd ed., Florence: Le Monnier
9. ^ a b Gardani, Francesco; Pellegrini, Matteo et al. (2026), DynaMorphPro: loanwords, conversions and class shifts in Latin and Old Italian, CIRCSE / LiLa, github.com/CIRCSE/DynaMorphPro (CC BY-SA 4.0)
10. ^ a b c d e f g Lewis, Charlton T.; Short, Charles (1879), A Latin Dictionary, Oxford: Clarendon Press
11. ^ a b c d Georges, Karl Ernst (1913–1918), Ausführliches lateinisch-deutsches Handwörterbuch, 8th ed., ed. Heinrich Georges, Hannover; Leipzig: Hahn
12. ^ a b Stelten, Leo F. (1995), Dictionary of Ecclesiastical Latin, Peabody, Mass.: Hendrickson
13. ^ a b c d Niermeyer, J. F. (1976), Mediae Latinitatis Lexicon Minus, Leiden: Brill