scurra

Forms

scurra m (genitive scurrae); first declension^[1]

Etymology

It is probably borrowed from Etruscan, as Walde and Hofmann and the OLD hold.^[2][3][1] Pokorny and Meiser proposed Proto-Indo-European *sk(w)r̥sa from a root *skers- (“to jump”), but de Vaan calls this a mere root etymology without clear cognates, semantically unconvincing, and notes that inherited masculine nouns in ⟨-a⟩ tend to be transparent.^[2][4]

Earliest recorded meaning

De Vaan dates it from Plautus,^[2] who uses it of the fashionable city idler, as in the Mostellaria, where a country slave mocks a town slave as a “town dandy, the darling of the people”.^[5][3]

Semantic evolution

It first named a fashionable idler of the town, a man about town or dandy, and Cicero uses it of an elegant debauchee.^[3][5] The word came to refer mainly to the offensive wit such men affected, and by Augustan times it meant a professional buffoon or jester, usually attached to a rich man as a kind of parasite;^[3][5] Zeno, Cicero reports, mockingly called Socrates “the Attic buffoon”.^[5] Under the later emperors it was a soldier of the guard.^[5] In medieval Latin it can mean a servant or a mercenary soldier.^[6]

Timeline

• c. 250–184 BC – Plautus of the town dandy.^[5][2][4]
• 81–43 BC – Cicero of elegant debauchees and of Zeno's jibe at Socrates.^[5][4]
• 65–8 BC – Horace of the buffoon.^[5][4]

Meanings

Noun

1. A fashionable city idler, man about town, dandy.^[3][5][1]
2. A professional buffoon, jester, often a rich man's hanger-on.^[3][5][1]
3. (Late Latin) A soldier of the imperial guard.^[5]
4. (Medieval Latin) A servant; a mercenary soldier.^[6]

Word family

• scurrīlis
• scurror
• scurrula

Related words

• scurrīlitās

References

1. ^ a b c d e f Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d de Vaan, Michiel (2008), Etymological Dictionary of Latin and the other Italic Languages, Leiden Indo-European Etymological Dictionary Series 7, Leiden; Boston: Brill
3. ^ a b c d e f Glare, P. G. W., ed. (2012), Oxford Latin Dictionary, 2nd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
4. ^ a b c d Köbler, Gerhard (2010), Lateinisches Abkunfts- und Wirkungswörterbuch für Altertum und Mittelalter, online ed., koeblergerhard.de
5. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k Lewis, Charlton T.; Short, Charles (1879), A Latin Dictionary, Oxford: Clarendon Press
6. ^ a b Niermeyer, J. F. (1976), Mediae Latinitatis Lexicon Minus, Leiden: Brill