tegimen

Forms

tegimen n (genitive tegiminis); third declension^[1] The forms tegumen and tegmen are also used; in the oblique cases the short form tegminis is usual.^[2][3]

Etymology

It is from Latin tegō (“to cover”) + -men.^[2][1][4] De Vaan traces tegō to Proto-Italic *teg-e/o- (“to cover”) and Proto-Indo-European *(s)teg-e/o- (“to cover”).^[5] Cognate with Ancient Greek στέγω (stégō, “to cover, keep off”), Old Irish teg (“house”), Lithuanian stógas (“roof”) and Old Norse þak (“roof”).^[5]

Earliest recorded meaning

Lucretius uses it of a woven garment;^[6] Lewis & Short note that it is mostly poetic and post-Augustan, and that Cicero has it in prose only once, translating from Greek.^[3]

Semantic evolution

It is any covering: Laevius has rivers frozen with a covering of onyx, and Virgil's Tityrus lies “under the cover of a spreading beech”.^[2] It is applied to clothing and armour, as in Cicero's Anacharsis, whose clothing is a Scythian covering, to a shield, to the hide of an animal, as the lion skin in Virgil, and to the husk of grain or the skin of a fruit.^[2][4][6] Church Latin has shelter, covering, shield and protection.^[7]

In medieval Latin it is a roof, roofing, a refuge, and figuratively a sham or pretext.^[8]

Timeline

• 96–55 BC – Lucretius of a woven garment.^[6][9]
• 81–43 BC – Cicero of a Scythian garment.^[2][3][9]
• 70–19 BC – Virgil of the shade of a beech and of a lion skin.^[2][9]
• 1st century AD – Columella of the husk of grain.^[2][9]

Meanings

Noun

1. A covering, cover.^[2][3][1]
2. Clothing, armour; a shield.^[2][4]
3. The skin or hide of an animal; the husk of a seed or fruit.^[2]
4. (Ecclesiastical Latin) Shelter, protection.^[7]
5. (Medieval Latin) A roof; a refuge; a pretext, sham.^[8]

Related words

• tegō
• tegumentum

References

1. ^ a b c d e Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f g h i j Glare, P. G. W., ed. (2012), Oxford Latin Dictionary, 2nd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
3. ^ a b c d Lewis, Charlton T.; Short, Charles (1879), A Latin Dictionary, Oxford: Clarendon Press
4. ^ a b c Georges, Karl Ernst (1913–1918), Ausführliches lateinisch-deutsches Handwörterbuch, 8th ed., ed. Heinrich Georges, Hannover; Leipzig: Hahn
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 Gaffiot, Félix (2016), Dictionnaire latin-français, new ed. by Gérard Gréco et al. (Gaffiot 2016), online ed.
7. ^ a b Stelten, Leo F. (1995), Dictionary of Ecclesiastical Latin, Peabody, Mass.: Hendrickson
8. ^ a b Niermeyer, J. F. (1976), Mediae Latinitatis Lexicon Minus, Leiden: Brill
9. ^ a b c d Köbler, Gerhard (2010), Lateinisches Abkunfts- und Wirkungswörterbuch für Altertum und Mittelalter, online ed., koeblergerhard.de