The corpus record — Latin

balbutio

balbutio · v. n

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

Where it lives

Satyrarum libri 1 · 0.7/10k
Epistulae. Selections. 3 · 0.69/10k
Peristephanon Liber 1 · 0.57/10k
Lucullus 1 · 0.56/10k
Metamorphoses 2 · 0.37/10k
De Divinatione 1 · 0.36/10k
De Medicina 1 · 0.1/10k
Naturalis Historia 1 · 0.03/10k

What it meant

balbūtĭo — Lewis & Short

balbūtĭo (-uttio), īre, v. n. and

I a. [balbus].

I Neutr., to stammer, stutter: balbutire est cum quādam linguae haesitatione et confusione trepidare, Non. p. 80, 13; Cels. 5, 26, 31: lingua, Cod. 15, 6, 22. —Transf., of birds, not to sing clearly: merula hieme balbutit, Plin. 10, 29, 42, § 80. —

B Trop., to speak upon something obscurely, not distinctly or not correctly: desinant balbutire (Academici), aperteque et clarā voce audeant dicere, Cic. Tusc. 5, 26, 75; id. Div. 1, 3, 5.—

II Act., to stutter, stammer, or lisp out something: illum Balbutit Scaurum pravis fultum male talis, he, lisping or fondling, calls him Scaurus, Hor. S. 1, 3, 48.—Trop., as above: Stoicus perpauca balbutiens, Cic. Ac. 2, 45, 137.

In the wild

balbutientem Cicero, De Divinatione 1.5
balbutiens Apuleius, Metamorphoses 8.14
balbutit Horace, Satyrarum libri 1.3.48
balbutiens Cicero, Lucullus 137
balbutit Jerome, Epistulae. Selections. 60.1
balbutiens Apuleius, Metamorphoses 10.10

6 of 11 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.