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The corpus record — Latin

aerumna

aerumna

task; distress

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

Where it lives

Densest 12 of 56 attested works shown, by occurrences per 10,000 attested tokens.

What it meant

1. aerumna — de Vaan

aerumna 'task; distress' [f. a] (P1.+) The word is often regarded as a loan from Greek αιρομένη, but there is no example in Greek of the use of the f. of this participle as a noun meaning 'burden'. Borrowing from an Etruscan source has been claimed repeatedly, but is impossible to prove. BibL: WH I: 18f., EM 12, Biville 1990 II: 103f. aerusco, -Sre 'to beg' [v. I] (Gel, Paul, ex F.) Pit *iske/o- 'to demand', … — [de Vaan, s.v. aerumna, p. 41]

2. aerumna — Lewis & Short

aerumna, ae (pleb. er-), f.contr. from aegrimonia; as to the suppressed g, cf. jumentum from jugum, Doed. Syn. IV. p. 420. Others explain aerumna (with Paul. ex Fest. s. v. aerumnula, p. 24 Müll.) orig. for a frame for carrying burdens upon the back; hence trop.,

I need, want, trouble, toil, hardship, distress, tribulation, calamity, etc. (objectively; while aegrimonia, like aegritudo, denotes, subjectively, the condition of mind, Doed. 1. c.; for the most part only ante-class., except in Cic., who uses it several times, in order to designate by one word the many modifications and shadings of the condition of mental suffering; in Quintilian's time the word was obsolete, v. Quint. 8, 3, 26): tibi sunt ante ferendae aerumnae, Enn. ap. Cic. Div. 1, 20, 40 (Ann. v. 47 Vahl.); cf.: Ilia dia nepos, quas erumnas tetulisti, id. ap. Charis. p. 70 P. (Ann. v. 56 ib.): quantis cum aerumnis exantlavi diem, id. ap. Non. 292, 8 (Trag. v. 127 ib.): uno ut labore absolvat aerumnas duas (of the pains of parturition), Plaut. Am. 1, 2, 26: animus aequos optimum est aerumnae condimentum, id. Rud. 2, 3, 71; id. Ep. 2, 1, 10; so, id. Capt. 5, 4, 12; id. Curc. 1, 2, 54; id. Pers. 1, 1, 1: lapit cor cura, aerumna corpus conficit, Pac. ap. Non. 23, 8; Ter. Hec. 3, 1, 8; Lucr. 3, 50: aerumna gravescit, id. 4, 1065: quo pacto adversam aerumnam ferant, Ter. Phorm. 2, 1, 12: maeror est aegritudo flebilis: aerumna aegritudo laboriosa: dolor aegritudo crucians, Cic. Tusc. 4, 8, 18: Herculis aerumnas perpeti: sic enim majores nostri labores non fugiendos tristissimo tamen verbo aerumnas etiam in Deo nominaverunt, id. Fin. 2, 35; cf. id. ib. 5, 32, 95: mors est aerumnarum requies, Sall. C. 51, 20; so id. J. 13, 22: Luculli miles collecta viatica multis Aerumnis, ad assem Perdiderat, with much difficulty, * Hor. Ep. 2, 2, 26: multiplicabo aerumnas tuas, Vulg. Gen. 3, 16: in labore et aerumnā (fui), ib. 2 Cor. 11, 27.—
II In later Lat. for defeat (of an army), Amm. 15, 4; cf. id. 15, 8 al.!*? At a later period, also, ĕrumna was written with short e, Paulin. Petric. Vit. D. Mart. 1, 66. Hence, Enn. ap. Charis. p. 76 P. derives it from eruere (quod mentem eruat). Cf. Doed. Syn. IV. p. 420.

Where it came from

  • de Vaan, Etymological Dictionary of Latin and the other Italic Languages (Brill 2008) Treated in de Vaan, Etymological Dictionary of Latin and the other Italic Languages (Brill 2008) s.v. aerumna (scan p. 41; entry #15). Root candidates: *h2eis-.
  • Ernout-Meillet, Dictionnaire etymologique de la langue latine Treated in Ernout-Meillet, Dictionnaire etymologique de la langue latine s.v. aerumna (scan p. 36; entry #235).

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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.