quirrito

Forms

quirrītō (present infinitive quirrītāre); first conjugation, no passive, no perfect or supine stems^[1]

Etymology

It is onomatopoeic, imitating the grunt of a boar.^[1][2]

Earliest recorded meaning

Suetonius gives it in his fragment on the cries of animals as the sound of the boar.^[2][3]

Semantic evolution

It occurs otherwise only in the late poem on the voices of animals in the Latin Anthology (the so-called Carmen de Philomela), in the words quirritant verres, “the boars grunt”.^[4][5][2] Georges treats it as a second verb beside quirītō “to cry out”, also spelt quīrīto.^[2]

Timeline

• c. 75–150 AD – Suetonius lists it as the cry of the boar.^[2][3]

Meanings

Verb

1. (intransitive, of a boar) To grunt.^[4][5][1]

References

1. ^ a b c d e Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e Georges, Karl Ernst (1913–1918), Ausführliches lateinisch-deutsches Handwörterbuch, 8th ed., ed. Heinrich Georges, Hannover; Leipzig: Hahn
3. ^ a b Köbler, Gerhard (2010), Lateinisches Abkunfts- und Wirkungswörterbuch für Altertum und Mittelalter, online ed., koeblergerhard.de
4. ^ a b Lewis, Charlton T.; Short, Charles (1879), A Latin Dictionary, Oxford: Clarendon Press
5. ^ a b Gaffiot, Félix (2016), Dictionnaire latin-français, new ed. by Gérard Gréco et al. (Gaffiot 2016), online ed.