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The corpus record — Latin

Abdera

Abdera · n

Abdera, a town on the southern coast of Thrace, not far from the mouth of the Nestus, noted for the stupidity of its…

Generated live from the audited Latin corpus — every figure on this page is a database query, not prose from memory.

Where it lives

  • Ibis 1 · 2.54/10k
  • Ab urbe condita libri, erklürt von M. Weissenborn, book 45 1 · 0.76/10k
  • Naturalis Historia 4 · 0.1/10k
  • Noctes Atticae 1 · 0.09/10k
  • Res Gestae 1 · 0.08/10k
  • Letters to Atticus 1 · 0.08/10k
  • Ab urbe condita 1 · 0.02/10k

What it meant — Lewis & Short

Abdēra, ōrum, n., and ae, f., =*)/abo)hra.

I Abdera, a town on the southern coast of Thrace, not far from the mouth of the Nestus, noted for the stupidity of its inhabitants. It was the birthplace of the philosophers Protagoras, Democritus, and Anaxarchus; n., Liv. 45, 29, 6; Gell. 5, 3, 3; f., Ov. Ib. 469; Plin. 25, 8, 53, § 94 dub.; 4, 11, 18, § 42: hic Abdera, non tacente me, here was Abdera itself, Cic. Att. 4, 17, 3 (4, 16, 6).—
2 Folly, stupidity, madness, Cic. l. l. (cf.: id est *)abo)hritiko/n, i. e. stupid, id. Att. 7, 7, 4, and Arn. 5, p. 164; Juv. 10, 50; Mart. 10, 25, 4).—
B Hence, derivv.
1 Abdērīta and Abdērītes, ae, m., =*)abo)hrits, an Abderite: Democritus Abderites, Laber. ap. Gell. 10, 17: Abderites Protagoras, Cic. N. D. 1, 23, 63; cf. id. Brut. 8: de Protagora Abderita, id. de Or. 3, 32, 128: Abderitae legati, Liv. 43, 4, 8; cf. id. § 12 sq.; Vitr. 7, 5, 6; Just. 15, 2 al.
2 Ab-dērītānus, a, um, adj., of Abdera, meton. for stupid, foolish: Abderitanae pectora plebis habes, Mart. 10, 25, 4.—
II A city of Hispania Baetlca, on the southern coast, now Adra, Mel. 2, 6, 7; Plin. 3, 1, 3, § 8.

In the wild

6 of 10 attestations shown.

Where it came from

No etymology authority pointer is recorded for this lemma yet — an honest gap, not an omission.

Latin text and lemmatization derived from the Perseus Digital Library (canonical-latinLit), CC BY-SA 4.0. Lewis & Short (public domain) via Perseus. This derived data is shared under the same CC BY-SA 4.0 license.