The corpus record — Latin

cantilena

cantilena · f

a song

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

Where it lives

De Bissula 1 · 27.25/10k
Ephemeris id est totius diei negotium 1 · 7.71/10k
Firmus Saturninus, Proculus et Bonosus 1 · 4.32/10k
Florida 2 · 2.54/10k
Divus Aurelianus 1 · 1.28/10k
Epistularum 1 · 1.1/10k
Phormio 1 · 0.92/10k
Peristephanon Liber 1 · 0.57/10k
Epistulae. Selections. 2 · 0.43/10k
Noctes Atticae 2 · 0.18/10k
De Oratore 1 · 0.17/10k
Res Gestae 2 · 0.16/10k

Densest 12 of 16 attested works shown, by occurrences per 10,000 attested tokens.

What it meant

cantĭlēna — Lewis & Short

cantĭlēna, ae, f.cantillo.

I In anteclass. and class. lang., a song, in a disparaging sense, an old song; vulg. for silly, trite prattle, gossip: ut crebro mihi insusurret cantilenam suam, Cic. Att. 1, 19, 8: totam istam cantilenam ex hoc pendere, ut quam plurimum lucri faciant, Brut. ap. Cic. Fam. 11, 20, 2: qui non Graeci alicujus cottidianam loquacitatem sine usu, neque ex scholis cantilenam requirunt, Cic. de Or. 1, 23, 105.—Prov.: cantilenam eandem canis, = to\ au)to\ a)/|deis a)=|sma, ever the old song, Ter. Phorm. 3, 2, 10.—

II Postclass. in a good sense, a song, in gen., Gell. 9, 4, 14; so id. 19, 9, 8: in cantilenis et proverbiis, Vulg. Ecclus. 47, 18: cantilenas meditari pro jubilo molliores, Amm. 22, 4, 6; of a lampoon, Vop. Aur. 7, 2; cf. Fest. p. 181, 16 Müll.

In the wild

cantilenam Cicero, Letters to Atticus 1.19.8
cantilena Ausonius, Ephemeris id est totius diei negotium 1.21
cantilenae Augustine, Epistulae. Selections. 38.3
cantilenae Prudentius, Peristephanon Liber 10.305
cantilenam Apuleius, Florida 12
Cantilenam Terence, Phormio 3.2

6 of 20 attestations shown.

Where it came from

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

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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.