Etymologically
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stillicidium

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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]

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