The corpus record — Latin

elegantia

choosiness, refinement

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

Where it lives

De Optimo Genere Oratorum 1 · 6.32/10k
Atticus 1 · 2.83/10k
De Tranquillitate Animi 2 · 2.65/10k
Ausonii Burdigalensis Vasatis Gratiarum Actio Ad Grati Angratianum Imperatorem Pro Consulatu 1 · 2.41/10k
Brutus 6 · 2.39/10k
Noctes Atticae 19 · 1.7/10k
De Brevitate Vitae 1 · 1.62/10k
De Vita Iulii Agricolae 1 · 1.48/10k
De Architectura 7 · 1.21/10k
De Consolatione ad Marciam 1 · 1.19/10k
Mercator 1 · 1.17/10k
Pro P. Sulla 1 · 1.07/10k

Densest 12 of 40 attested works shown, by occurrences per 10,000 attested tokens.

What it meant

1. elegantia — de Vaan

elegantia 'choosiness, refinement' (PL+), intellegere 'to understand' (P1-+), — [de Vaan, s.v. elegantia, p. 346]

2. ēlĕgantia — Lewis & Short

ēlĕgantia, ae, f.elegans. *

I A being nice or particular; exquisiteness, fastidiousness (ante-class. and very rare): ejus elegantia meam extemplo speciem spernat, Plaut. Mil. 4, 6, 20.—Far more freq.,

II Taste, propriety, refinement, grace, elegance (cf.: gustus, sapor, judicium).

(a) With gen.: tu eloquentiam ab elegantia doctrinae segregandam putes, Cic. de Or. 1, 2, 5: vitae, Tac. A. 14, 19: morum, id. ib. 5, 8: capilli (with venustas oris), Plin. 35, 10, 36, § 67: ac subtilitas operum, id. 16, 15, 26, § 66 et saep.: verborum Latinorum, Cic. Brut. 75, 261; cf. scriptorum, id. Fam. 4, 4; so, Latini sermonis, id. de Or. 2, 7, 28: mira sermonis, Quint. 10, 1, 114: figurarum, id. 12, 9, 6; and transf.: Socraticorum, id. 10, 1, 83; cf. Secundi, id. 12, 10, 11. —In plur.: vocum verborumque, Gell. 2, 9 fin.—

(b) Absol.: qua munditia homines! qua elegantia! Cic. Fam. 9, 20, 2; cf. id. Sull. 28, 79; id. Leg. 3, 1: quae (agricultura) abhorret ab omni politiore elegantia, id. Fin. 3, 2; cf. Plin. 13, 9, 18, § 62; 14, 6, 8, § 71; Suet. Aug. 73: elegantia modo et munditia remanebit, Cic. Or. 23 fin.; cf. Quint. 6, 3, 20; 10, 2, 19 al.—In plur.: laudatus propter elegantias dominus, Petr. 34, 5; Gell. 1, 4; cf. id. 19, 4.

In the wild

elegantia Cicero, Philippicae 13.38
elegantia Aulus Gellius, Noctes Atticae 11.2.a
elegantia Cicero, Brutus 264
elegantiam Aulus Gellius, Noctes Atticae 17.20.7
elegantia Quintilian, Institutio Oratoria 1.8.8
elegantia Aulus Gellius, Noctes Atticae 19.12.1

6 of 104 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. elegantia (scan p. 346; entry #889).

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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.