The corpus record — Latin

acus3

acus3 · f

A needle

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

Where it lives

Moretum, Appendix Vergiliana 1 · 12.92/10k
Cento Nuptialis 1 · 7.33/10k
Epithalamium de nuptiis Honorii Augusti 1 · 4.57/10k
Pro M. Scauro 1 · 3.37/10k
Divus Claudius 1 · 3.37/10k
De Medicina 33 · 3.22/10k
Mosella 1 · 3.08/10k
de raptu Proserpinae 2 · 2.87/10k
Amores 4 · 2.56/10k
Panegyricus de quarto consulatu Honorii Augusti 1 · 2.52/10k
De Paenitentia 1 · 2.45/10k
Menaechmi 2 · 2.11/10k

Densest 12 of 40 attested works shown, by occurrences per 10,000 attested tokens.

What it meant

1. ăcus — Lewis & Short

ăcus, ūs, f.cf. 2. acer.

I A needle or pin, as being pointed, both for common use and ornament:quasarcinatrix veletiam ornatrix utitur, Paul. ex Fest. p. 9 Müll.

A Lit.: mirabar vulnus, quod acu punctum videtur, Cic. Mil. 24.—Hence, acu pingere, to embroider, Verg. A. 9, 582; Ov. M. 6, 23; cf. Plin. 8, 48, § 191; Isid. Orig. 19, 22, 22.—Esp. a hair-pin: figat acus tortas sustineatque comas, Mart. 14, 24: foramen acūs, the eye of a needle, Vulg. Matt. 19, 24.—Also, a surgeon's needle, a probe, Cels. 7, 17.—Hence,

B Trop.: acu rem tangere, to touch the thing with a needle; in Engl. phrase, to hit the nail on the head, Plaut. Rud. 5, 2, 19; so, to denote careful and successful effort: si acum quaereres, acum invenisses, id. Men. 2, 1, 13.—

II The tongue of a buckle, Treb. Poll. Claud. 14.—

III I. q. acus, ĕris, Col. 2, 10, 40.—

IV An implement of husbandry, Pall. 1, 43, 2.

2. ăcus — Lewis & Short

ăcus, ĕris, n. (also, ūs, f., v. 1. acus, III.) [kindred with acus, ūs, Goth.

I ahana, old Norse agn, old Germ. Agana], = a)/xuron, the husk of grain and of pulse; chaff, Cato, R. R. 54, 2; Varr. R. R. 1, 52; 57; 3, 9, 8.

3. ăcus — Lewis & Short

ăcus, i, m.1. acus,

I a kind of sea-fish with a pointed snout, the hornpike or gar-pike (Gr. belo/nh): acus sive belone unus piscium, etc., Plin. 9, 51, 76, § 166: et satius tenues ducere credis acos, Mart. 10, 37, 6; cf. Plin. 32, 11, 53, § 145, where belonae again occurs. (Some read una for unus in the passage from Plin., and acūs for acos in Mart., as if these forms belonged to 1. acus.)

In the wild

6 of 104 attestations shown.

Where it came from

Ernout-Meillet, Dictionnaire etymologique de la langue latine Treated in Ernout-Meillet, Dictionnaire etymologique de la langue latine s.v. acus (scan p. 31; entry #165).
Walde-Hofmann, Lateinisches etymologisches Worterbuch Treated in Walde-Hofmann, Lateinisches etymologisches Worterbuch s.v. acus (scan p. 1903; entry #4388).

Downloads

Word record (JSON)·Concordance (CSV)·Frequencies (CSV)·Cite (BibTeX)

CC BY 4.0 with receipt attribution — every file carries its license line. What is exportable

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.