The corpus record — Latin

festuca

stalk, straw; ram, pile-driver

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

Where it lives

Saturae 1 · 2.21/10k
Miles Gloriosus 1 · 0.79/10k
Epistulae. Selections. 3 · 0.69/10k
De agri cultura 1 · 0.64/10k
Apologia 1 · 0.47/10k
Res Rustica, Books I-IX 2 · 0.25/10k
Epistulae. Selections. 1 · 0.22/10k
Naturalis Historia 6 · 0.15/10k

What it meant

1. festuca — de Vaan

festuca 'stalk, straw; ram, pile-driver' [f. a] (PL+; in CLat. sometimes fistiica) Derivatives: festucare 'to ram down' (Cato+), festUcula 'chaff (Varro). If ferula 'giant fennel* < *fes-ela is cognate, this would point to PLat *fes-. The suffix -uca, -tjcas is found in several plant names (sambucus, albucus, lactiica\ which points to *festo- as the earlier stem. No etymology. BibL: WH I: 489, EM 231. -^ferula — [de Vaan, s.v. festuca, p. 230]

2. festūca — Lewis & Short

festūca, ae, f.,

I a stalk, stem, straw.

I Lit.

A In gen.: qui homo in pratis per fenisecta festucas corradit, Varr. L. L. 5, § 136; Col. 8, 15, 6; Plin. 10, 41, 57, § 116; 18, 27, 67, § 254.—

B A rod with which slaves were touched in the ceremony of manumission: qui vindicabat festucam tenebat ... et homini imponebat, Gai. Inst. 4, 16; cf.: vindicta, A.: quid? ea ingenuan' an festuca facta e serva libera'st? Plaut. Mil. 4, 1, 15; id. Pers. 5, 175.—

II Transf., a straw-like weed which grows among barley, also called aegilops, Plin. 18, 17, 44, § 155.—

B A trifle, particle, mote: in oculo fratris, Vulg. Matt. 7, 3; id. Luc. 6, 41.

3. festüca — Walde–Hofmann

festüca, -ae f. (vlt. um n. seit Itala) , Halm, Grashalm, wilder Hafer; Stäbchen des Praetors, womit der Sklave zum Zeichen der Freilassung geschlagen wurde"; auch „Schlägel, Ramme* (seit Plaut. [vlt. fist-, dies rom., Wartburg III 486, Svennung Unters. 118f.), -ürius Gell, -ula Pallad.; -äre „festrammen“ seit Cato): Verbindung mit ferula „Pfriemenkraut“, wenn aus *fes-olà, ist wahrscheinlich, weitere Anknüpfung … — [Walde–Hofmann, s.v. festüca, p. 521]

In the wild

festuca Pliny the Elder, Naturalis Historia 10.41
festucam Pliny the Elder, Naturalis Historia 9.10.p2
festuca Pliny the Elder, Naturalis Historia 18.17.p7
festucis Pliny the Elder, Naturalis Historia 36.25.p1
festuca Plautus, Miles Gloriosus 4.1
festucam Jerome, Epistulae. Selections. 45.4

6 of 16 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. festuca (scan p. 230; entry #564). Root candidates: *fes-, *festo-.
Walde-Hofmann, Lateinisches etymologisches Worterbuch Treated in Walde-Hofmann, Lateinisches etymologisches Worterbuch s.v. festüca (scan p. 521; entry #1114). Root candidates: *dhoastüra-, *dhues-, *festü-.

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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.