stillicidium

Forms

stīllicidium n (genitive stīllicidiī or stīllicidī); second declension^[1] Also spelled stīlicidium.^[2][3]

Etymology

It is from Latin stīlla (“drop”) + cadō (“to fall”) + -ium, “a falling of drops”.^[2][1][4] Varro already explained it as what falls drop by drop.^[3]

De Vaan takes stīlla as a diminutive Proto-Italic *stīr-lā- beside stīria (“icicle”), although that word is attested only in Imperial Latin.^[5] cadō goes back to *kad-e/o- and perhaps Proto-Indo-European *(ḱe-)ḱh₂d- (“to fall”).^[5]

Earliest recorded meaning

It appears in the 1st century BC.^[2] Lucretius has stillicidī cāsus lapidem cavat, “the falling of drips hollows out a stone”,^[2][3] and Cicero, in the De oratore, counts the rights of eaves-drip among questions of property law.^[2]

Semantic evolution

Besides any dripping of a liquid, it could mean a single falling drop, as in Seneca's discussion of rain and hail.^[2] Pliny the Elder uses stillicidium vēsīcae or ūrīnae for a disease in which urine passes only drop by drop.^[2]

In building and in law it was the drip of rain from the eaves: a law quoted by Varro regulates eaves-drip and runoff,^[2] Vitruvius describes how roofs were made to shed it,^[2] and the jurists Gaius and Paulus discuss the right to turn it onto a neighbour's roof or yard.^[2][6] Vitruvius also uses it for the slope of a roof,^[2] and Pliny for the drip from trees.^[2] The Ecclesiastical Latin dictionaries give it as a raindrop.^[7]

English borrowed it in the 1620s as stillicide, also as a term of Roman law.^[6]

Timeline

• 116–27 BC – Varro quotes a law on eaves-drip and runoff.^[2][4]
• 96–55 BC – Lucretius speaks of dripping that hollows out stone.^[2][4]
• 81–43 BC – Cicero mentions rights of eaves-drip.^[2][4]
• c. 84–c. 25 BC – Vitruvius uses it of rain from roofs and of the slope of a roof.^[2][4]
• 4 BC–65 AD – Seneca uses it for a single drop of rain.^[2][4]
• 23/24–79 AD – Pliny the Elder names a bladder disease with it.^[2][4]
• 1620s – Borrowed into English as stillicide.^[6]

Meanings

Noun

1. The falling of a liquid in drops, a drip; also, a single falling drop.^[2][3]
2. (medicine) stillicidium vēsīcae or ūrīnae, a condition in which urine passes only in drops, strangury.^[2]
3. (often plural) The drip of rain from the eaves of a house;^[2][3] (law) the right concerning this drip.^[2][3]
4. The slope of a roof that throws off the rain.^[2]
5. (Ecclesiastical Latin) A raindrop.^[7]

Related words

• stīllō
• cadō
• English stillicide

References

1. ^ a b 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 r s t u v w Glare, P. G. W., ed. (2012), Oxford Latin Dictionary, 2nd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
3. ^ a b c d e f Lewis, Charlton T.; Short, Charles (1879), A Latin Dictionary, Oxford: Clarendon Press
4. ^ a b c d e f g Köbler, Gerhard (2010), Lateinisches Abkunfts- und Wirkungswörterbuch für Altertum und Mittelalter, online ed., koeblergerhard.de
5. ^ a b 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 Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
7. ^ a b Stelten, Leo F. (1995), Dictionary of Ecclesiastical Latin, Peabody, Mass.: Hendrickson