scopa

Forms

scōpa f (genitive scōpae); first declension^[1] The word is nearly always plural, scōpae, scōpārum, and Varro and Quintilian cite it as a noun with no singular.^[2][3] The singular occurs in the plant name scōpa rēgia and in the Vulgate.^[2][4]

Etymology

It is inherited from Proto-Italic *skōp-ā-.^[5] De Vaan compares Ancient Greek σκᾶπος (skâpos, “stick”) (in Hesychius), σκήπτομαι (skḗptomai, “to support oneself”), Latvian šķèps (“spear, javelin”), Old High German skaft (“shaft”) and Old Norse skapt (“shaft”).^[5] He suggests that the Latin and Greek words could go back to ablaut forms of Proto-Indo-European *sk(e/o)h₂p-, but notes that no verb of that root is attested, so they might also be borrowings, perhaps independent ones.^[5] Wiktionary derives it from *skeh₂p- (“to prop”),^[1] and the OLD calls it cognate with scāpus “stalk, shaft”.^[2]

Earliest recorded meaning

De Vaan dates it from Naevius,^[5] and Georges records the plural for the twigs or sprigs of plants such as wormwood and asparagus, in Naevius and Pliny the Elder.^[4][6]

Semantic evolution

The first sense is branches or sprigs of a plant, usually tied together, and above all tied into a broom.^[2] Plautus already has a character call for brooms to sweep away the spiders' work,^[2] and Horace, Petronius and Martial use the word for a household broom.^[2][3] Pliny the Elder notes that country brooms were made from the sharp-leaved oxymyrsinē.^[2]

A broom that is untied is useless, and this gave proverbial phrases: Cicero says that those who break up the structure of a speech “untie the broom” (scōpās dissolvere), and he says that Lucius Caesar, who came to him with absurd messages, was not a man but scōpae solūtae, “an untied broom”.^[2][4] The phrase scōpa rēgia named the shrub butcher's broom in Scribonius Largus and Pliny, and in the plural an aromatic plant.^[2]

Medieval writers used it for a bundle of twigs, a birch for punishment and a broom;^[7] Bede insists that it is always plural, and it was also the name of the birch tree.^[7]

Timeline

• c. 235–200 BC – Naevius uses it.^[5][6]
• c. 250–184 BC – Plautus uses it for brooms.^[2][6]
• 81–43 BC – Cicero quotes the proverb of the untied broom.^[2][6]
• before 66 AD – Petronius tells of silver swept up with the rubbish.^[2][6]
• 390–406 AD – The Vulgate uses the singular.^[4][6]

Meanings

Noun

1. (usually plural) Twigs, sprigs or branches of a plant, usually tied together.^[2][3]
2. (plural) A broom, besom.^[2][3]
3. scōpae solūtae: “an untied broom”, a useless person;^[2][4] scōpās dissolvere, to undo something well ordered.^[2][4]
4. scōpa rēgia: the shrub butcher's broom.^[2]
5. (Medieval Latin) A birch for punishment; the birch tree.^[7]

Word family

• scōpārius
• scopō
• scōpula
• scōpīlia

Related words

• scāpus
• scīpiō

Usage notes

A separate, rare word scopa, with a short o, is the Greek σκοπή (skopḗ, “lookout, observation”), used once by Martianus Capella in the sense of an observation or theory.^[4][8][3][6]

References

1. ^ a b c d Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q Glare, P. G. W., ed. (2012), Oxford Latin Dictionary, 2nd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
3. ^ a b c d e Lewis, Charlton T.; Short, Charles (1879), A Latin Dictionary, Oxford: Clarendon Press
4. ^ a b c d e f g Georges, Karl Ernst (1913–1918), Ausführliches lateinisch-deutsches Handwörterbuch, 8th ed., ed. Heinrich Georges, Hannover; Leipzig: Hahn
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 c d e f g Köbler, Gerhard (2010), Lateinisches Abkunfts- und Wirkungswörterbuch für Altertum und Mittelalter, online ed., koeblergerhard.de
7. ^ a b c Latham, R. E., D. R. Howlett, R. K. Ashdowne, et al. (1975–2013), Dictionary of Medieval Latin from British Sources, London: British Academy / Oxford University Press
8. ^ Gaffiot, Félix (2016), Dictionnaire latin-français, new ed. by Gérard Gréco et al. (Gaffiot 2016), online ed.