pueritia

Forms

pueritia f (genitive pueritiae); first declension^[1] Horace has the contracted form puertia.^[2][3]

Etymology

It is formed from puer (“boy”) with the suffix -itia.^[2][4][1] De Vaan derives ⟨puer⟩ from Proto-Italic *puwero-, perhaps Proto-Indo-European *ph₂u-ero- (“smaller”), or a newer formation on a root ⟨*pau-⟩ “small, young”.^[5] Isidore connected it with ⟨pūra⟩, “pure”.^[4][6]

Earliest recorded meaning

Köbler gives Terence as its first author.^[7]

Semantic evolution

It is boyhood or childhood, the state of being a boy, which Lewis and Short say usually lasted to the seventeenth year, though the word is often used of later youth; figuratively it is childish nature or callowness.^[2][3][1] Church Latin glosses it “childhood, boyhood, girlhood”.^[8]

Timeline

• 190–159 BC – Terence.^[7]
• 65–8 BC – Horace has puertia.^[2][7]

Meanings

Noun

1. Boyhood, childhood, youth.^[2][3][1][8]
2. (figurative) Childishness, callowness; innocence.^[2][1]

Related words

• puer
• puerīlis
• puerīlitās
• adulēscentia
• īnfantia

References

1. ^ a b c d e f g Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f Glare, P. G. W., ed. (2012), Oxford Latin Dictionary, 2nd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
3. ^ a b c 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. ^ de Vaan, Michiel (2008), Etymological Dictionary of Latin and the other Italic Languages, Leiden Indo-European Etymological Dictionary Series 7, Leiden; Boston: Brill
6. ^ Isidore of Seville, Etymologiarum sive Originum libri XX, ed. W. M. Lindsay (Oxford, 1911).
7. ^ a b c Köbler, Gerhard (2010), Lateinisches Abkunfts- und Wirkungswörterbuch für Altertum und Mittelalter, online ed., koeblergerhard.de
8. ^ a b Stelten, Leo F. (1995), Dictionary of Ecclesiastical Latin, Peabody, Mass.: Hendrickson