The corpus record — Latin

cibus

food

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

Where it lives

Fragments 1 · 151.52/10k
De Medicina 394 · 38.44/10k
Technopaegnion 5 · 33.67/10k
De ieiunio adversus psychicos 17 · 28.76/10k
Cathemerina 15 · 20.38/10k
Pescennius Niger 3 · 13.18/10k
Moretum, Appendix Vergiliana 1 · 12.92/10k
Epistulae. Selections. 56 · 12.8/10k
Fabulae Aesopiae 14 · 12.77/10k
Res Rustica, Books I-IX 88 · 11.18/10k
Naturalis Historia 434 · 10.95/10k
Ibis 4 · 10.18/10k

Densest 12 of 181 attested works shown, by occurrences per 10,000 attested tokens.

What it meant

1. cibus — de Vaan

cibus 'food' [m. o] (Naev.+) Derivatives: cibarius 'of food' (P1.+), cibatus> -its 'food, fodder' (P1.+). A root structure *k-bh is not allowed in PIE, whereas *b is an exceedingly rare phoneme. Hence, a PIE etymology would have to start from a root *lci-, with a suffix *-bh-. No good match was found. It may very well be a loanword, for instance, from Gr. κίβος> κίβισις 'box, chest', as proposed by Thurneysen 1907 … — [de Vaan, s.v. cibus, p. 126]

2. cĭbus — Lewis & Short

cĭbus, i, m.perh. root of capio,

I food for man and beast, victuals, fare, nutriment, fodder (class. in prose and poetry, both in sing. and plur.; syn.: esca, epulae; opp. potio, Cic. Fin. 1, 11, 37; cf. id. N. D. 2, 54, 136; so, cibus potusque, Tac. A. 13, 16: cibus et vinum, Cic. Div. 1, 29, 60; Juv. 10, 203: unda cibusque, Ov. M. 4, 262): cibum capere, Plaut. Trin. 4, 2, 60; Ter. Eun. 2, 3, 77: petere, id. ib. 3, 2, 38; id. Heaut. 5, 2, 25: capessere (of animals), Cic. N. D. 2, 47, 122: sumere, Nep. Att. 21, 6; Plin. 30, 5, 12, § 36: tantum cibi et potionis adhibendum, etc., Cic. Sen. 11, 36: digerere, Quint. 11, 2, 35; cf. id. 11, 3, 19: coquere, Varr. R. R. 2, 10, 7: concoquere, Cic. Fin. 2, 20, 64: mandere, id. N. D. 2, 54, 134: cibos suppeditare, id. Leg. 2, 27, 67: (Cleanthes) negat ullum esse cibum tam gravem, quin is die et nocte concoquatur, id. N. D. 2, 9, 24; cf.: suavissimus et idem facillimus ad concoquendum, id. Fin. 2, 20, 64: flentes orabant, ut se cibo juvarent, Caes. B. G. 7, 78 fin.: cibus animalis, the means of nourishment in the air, Cic. N. D. 2, 55, 136: cibi bubuli, Varr. R. R. 2, 11, 3; 1, 23, 2: cibus erat caro ferina, Sall. J. 18, 1: cum tenues hamos abdidit ante cibus, the bait, Tib. 2, 6, 24; Ov. M. 8, 856; 15, 476.—

B Transf. to the nourishment of plants, the nutritive juice, Lucr. 1, 353; Plin. 17, 2, 2, § 12.—

II Trop., food, sustenance (rare): quasi quidam humanitatis cibus, Cic. Fin. 5, 19, 54: cibus furoris, Ov. M. 6, 480: causa cibusque mali, id. R. Am. 138.

In the wild

6 of 1,782 attestations shown.

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. cibus (scan p. 126; entry #265). Root candidates: *lci-.
Ernout-Meillet, Dictionnaire etymologique de la langue latine Treated in Ernout-Meillet, Dictionnaire etymologique de la langue latine s.v. cibus (scan pp. 142-143; entry #2115).

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.