udus

Forms

ūdus (feminine ūda, neuter ūdum); first/second-declension adjective^[1]

Etymology

It is a contracted form of ūvidus (“wet, moist”).^[2][3][1] De Vaan notes that the order of attestation suggests a recent contraction, while Weiss allows that ⟨ūdus⟩ is older and ⟨ūvidus⟩ was formed from it as a hyperarchaism.^[4] ⟨ūvidus⟩ itself is related to Ancient Greek ὑγρός (hugrós, “wet”) and Old Norse vǫkr (“wet”).^[4]

Earliest recorded meaning

De Vaan dates it from Varro, Köbler from Catullus.^[4][5] Its oldest quotation in the OLD is an inscription of Puteoli prescribing walls whitewashed with wet lime.^[2]

Semantic evolution

It is covered or soaked with water or another liquid, wet, as Ovid's Dawn coming with wet hair, and of plants wet with sap, as Virgil's bud set into the moist bark.^[2][3] Martial uses it of a gambler soaked with wine, drunk.^[2] In Terentianus Maurus it translates the Greek grammarians' term for the liquid letters ⟨l m n r⟩.^[2] Lewis and Short call it poetic and post-Augustan in prose.^[3]

Döderlein explains that ūdus and ūvidus are wetness that consists of liquid, while hūmidus is wetness that soaks through, and quotes Seneca's clouds that are “moist, or rather wet”.^[6] Church Latin glosses it “wet, moist, tearful”.^[7]

Timeline

• 81/79–52/50 BC – In Catullus.^[5]
• 70–19 BC – Virgil of moist bark.^[2][5]
• 43 BC–18 AD – Ovid of Dawn's wet hair.^[2][5]
• 40–102/103 AD – Martial of a drunken gambler.^[2][5]

Meanings

Adjective

1. Wet, moist, damp.^[2][3][1][7]
2. Soaked with wine, drunken.^[2]
3. Wet with sap.^[2]
4. (grammar) Of letters, liquid.^[2]

Word family

• ūdō
• ūdor
• ūdulus

Related words

• ūvidus
• ūmidus
• madidus

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 k l 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 de Vaan, Michiel (2008), Etymological Dictionary of Latin and the other Italic Languages, Leiden Indo-European Etymological Dictionary Series 7, Leiden; Boston: Brill
5. ^ a b c d e Köbler, Gerhard (2010), Lateinisches Abkunfts- und Wirkungswörterbuch für Altertum und Mittelalter, online ed., koeblergerhard.de
6. ^ Döderlein, Ludwig (1874), Döderlein’s Hand-book of Latin Synonymes, tr. H. H. Arnold, Andover: W. F. Draper
7. ^ a b Stelten, Leo F. (1995), Dictionary of Ecclesiastical Latin, Peabody, Mass.: Hendrickson