The corpus record — Latin

calvus1

calvus1 · adj

bald

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

Where it lives

Dialogus de Oratoribus 15 · 16.13/10k
Ausonii de XII Caesaribus per Suetonium Tranquillum scriptis 1 · 11.76/10k
Opilius Macrinus 1 · 4.02/10k
Eclogarum Liber 1 · 3.65/10k
Fabulae Aesopiae 4 · 3.65/10k
Divus Julius 3 · 3.08/10k
Epigrammata Ausonii de diversis rebus 1 · 2.74/10k
C. Caligula 2 · 2.62/10k
Carmina 3 · 2.33/10k
Saturae 1 · 2.21/10k
Ab urbe condita, books 1-5 - 5 3 · 1.87/10k
Antoninus Heliogabalus 1 · 1.73/10k

Densest 12 of 42 attested works shown, by occurrences per 10,000 attested tokens.

What it meant

1. calvus — Lewis & Short

calvus, a, um, adj.cf. O. H. Germ. chalo; Germ. kahl,

I bald, without hair (whether by nature or by shaving or shearing; rare; not in Lucr., Cic., Hor., or Verg.): raso capite calvus, Plaut. Am. 1, 1, 306: senex, Petr. 27; Suet. Calig. 27: moechus, id. Caes. 51; Phaedr. 2, 2, 9; 5, 3, 1; 5, 6, 1.—

2 Subst.: calva, ae, f., the scalp without hair, Liv. 23, 24, 12; Mart. 10, 83, 12; 12, 45, 12.—

B Venus Calva, worshipped in a particular temple after the irruption of the Gauls (as it is pretended, because at that time the women cut off their hair for bowstrings), Lact. 1, 20, 7; Cypr. Idol. Van. 2, 10; Veg. Mil. 4, 9; cf. Serv. ad Verg. A. 1, 720.—

II Transf. to plants: vinea a vite calva, Cato, R. R. 33, 3 (cf. Plin. 17, 22, 35, § 196, s. v. calvatus): nuces, with smooth shells, Cato, R. R. 8, 2 (quoted in Plin. 15, 22, 24, § 90, where in MSS. the var. lect. galbas prob. arose from a false orthography of a later time; cf. the letter B fin.): calvae restes, Mart. 12, 32, 20.—Also,

B Subst.: calva, ae, f., a nut with a smooth shell, Petr. 66, 4.

2. Calvus — Lewis & Short

Calvus, i, m.,

I a cognomen of several persons, especially of the poet and orator C. Licinius; v. Licinius.

3. calvus — Walde–Hofmann

calvus, -a, -wm ,kahlgeschoren, kahl“ (seit Plaut., rom., ebenso calvitia , Kahlheit" spit, -ies seit Petron, -tum seit Cic.]; nux calea wrsch. die „nacktachalige Kastanie* [gr. YuuvoAómoc, Schrader KulturpfL? 396); recalvus „mit hoher, kahler Stirn“ Plaut. Sen. Hier., vgl. repandus, recurvus): aus *g.leyos, ital. kalouos wegen o. Kalávíeis „Calvii* (neben Kalaviis ,Calvius*, päl. Colauan(s) ,Calvanus* mit … — [Walde–Hofmann, s.v. calvus, p. 176]

In the wild

Calvum Pliny the Younger, Letters 1.2.2
caluo Suetonius, C. Caligula 27.1
calvo Juvenal, Saturae 2.6.533
Calvo Cicero, Epistulae ad Familiares 15.21.4
Calvus Quintilian, Institutio Oratoria 1.6.42
Calvi Ovid, Tristia 2.1.431

6 of 111 attestations shown.

Where it came from

Walde-Hofmann, Lateinisches etymologisches Worterbuch Treated in Walde-Hofmann, Lateinisches etymologisches Worterbuch s.v. calvus (scan pp. 176-177; entry #522). Root candidates: *gal-, *golk-, *acelic-.

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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.