purpureus

Forms

purpureus (feminine purpurea, neuter purpureum); first/second-declension adjective^[1] Lucretius has the old genitive purpureāī.^[2]

Etymology

It is borrowed from Ancient Greek πορφύρεος (porphúreos, “purple”), adapted to Latin, Wiktionary allows that it may instead be formed from purpura (“purple dye”) with -eus.^[3][4][1] The Greek word belongs to πορφύρα (porphúra, “purple fish, purple dye”), whose further origin is unclear.^[4]

Earliest recorded meaning

Köbler's first author is Livius Andronicus, in his Odyssey: vestis pulla purpurea ampla, a dark, purple, ample garment.^[4][3]

Semantic evolution

It is purple or crimson, of cloth dyed with the shellfish dye, and of people dressed in purple, as Horace's purple-clad tyrants.^[3] Of things it covers many shades of red and violet: grapes (Lucilius), fresh blood, as Virgil's sword red with much killing, and varieties of grape, pear and plum.^[3][2] With the stress on sheen it is rosy or glowing, of dawn and light and of a youthful face, as Catullus' Acme kissing her boy's eyes with her rosy mouth.^[3] Like Homer's ⟨πορφύρεος⟩ it is an epithet of the stirred-up sea in Virgil, and Naevius uses Purpureus as the name of a giant.^[3]

Church Latin glosses it “purple”.^[5]

Timeline

• 280/260–before 200 BC – Livius Andronicus of a purple garment.^[3][4]
• c. 235–200 BC – Naevius of the giant Purpureus.^[3][4]
• c. 180–102 BC – Lucilius of purple grapes.^[3][4]
• 81/79–52/50 BC – Catullus of a rosy mouth.^[3][4]
• 70–19 BC – Virgil of the sea and of blood.^[3][4]

Meanings

Adjective

1. Purple, crimson (dyed with purple); clad in purple.^[3][1][5]
2. Red, dark red, violet (of natural things, blood).^[3][2]
3. Rosy, glowing, bright.^[3][1]
4. (of the sea) Dark, surging.^[3]

Related words

• purpura
• purpurātus
• purpurō

References

1. ^ a b c d e f Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c Lewis, Charlton T.; Short, Charles (1879), A Latin Dictionary, Oxford: Clarendon Press
3. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o Glare, P. G. W., ed. (2012), Oxford Latin Dictionary, 2nd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
4. ^ a b c d e f g h Köbler, Gerhard (2010), Lateinisches Abkunfts- und Wirkungswörterbuch für Altertum und Mittelalter, online ed., koeblergerhard.de
5. ^ a b Stelten, Leo F. (1995), Dictionary of Ecclesiastical Latin, Peabody, Mass.: Hendrickson