The corpus record — Latin

catapulta

catapulta · f

a large engine of war for throwing arrows

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

Where it lives

Curculio 3 · 4.87/10k
Ab urbe condita, books 21-25 - 21 2 · 1.29/10k
Persa 1 · 1.27/10k
De Architectura 7 · 1.21/10k
Ab Urbe Condita, books 26-27 - 26 2 · 1.18/10k
Captivi 1 · 1.16/10k
Ab urbe condita libri, erklärt von M. Weissenborn, books 31-32 - 32 1 · 0.94/10k
Ab urbe condita libri, erklärt von M. Weissenborn, books 31-32 - 31 1 · 0.79/10k
Ab urbe condita, books 21-25 - 24 1 · 0.71/10k
Ab urbe condita libri, erklärt von M. Weissenborn, books 39-40 - 39 1 · 0.68/10k
Carmina 1 · 0.45/10k
De Bello Civili 1 · 0.31/10k

Densest 12 of 17 attested works shown, by occurrences per 10,000 attested tokens.

What it meant

cătăpulta — Lewis & Short

cătăpulta, ae, f., = o/ katape/lths,

I a large engine of war for throwing arrows, lances, stones, etc., a catapult (cf. ballista): catapultis ballistisque per omnia tabulata dispositis, Liv. 21, 11, 7; 21, 11, 10: maximae formae, id. 26, 47, 5; Vitr. 10, 11, 1; 10, 11, 19; 10, 15 sq.; Veg. Mil. 4, 22; Naev., Lucil., Varr., and Sisenn. ap. Non. p. 552, 17 sq.; Caes. B. C. 2, 9 al.; cf. Dict. of Antiq.—

II Meton., like ballista, for the missile itself, Plaut. Pers. 1, 1, 28; id. Curc. 3, 24; 5, 3, 12; id. Capt. 4, 2, 17; Titin. ap. Non. p. 552, 11 sq. (Com. Rel. v. 125 Rib.).

In the wild

catapultae Plautus, Persa 1.1
catapultas Ammianus Marcellinus, Res Gestae 15.12.1
catapultae Livy, Ab urbe condita libri, erklärt von M. Weissenborn, books 39-40 - 39 p5
catapultisque Tacitus, Annales 15.p9
catapultae Tacitus, Annales 12.p57
catapulta Sidonius Apollinaris, Carmina 22.4.123

6 of 36 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. catapulta (scan p. 129; entry #1885).

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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.