The corpus record — Latin

formosus

beautiful

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

Where it lives

Lydia, Appendix Vergiliana 5 · 93.81/10k
Dirae, Appendix Vergiliana 3 · 46.22/10k
Copa, Appendix Vergiliana 1 · 42.19/10k
Eclogues 13 · 28.65/10k
Hamilcar 1 · 19.34/10k
Fescinnina de nuptiis Honorii Augusti 1 · 18.25/10k
Apocolocyntosis 4 · 14.77/10k
Amores 21 · 13.44/10k
Elegiae 33 · 13.04/10k
Appendix Vergiliana 1 · 9.12/10k
Elegiae 11 · 8.9/10k
Remedia Amoris 4 · 7.63/10k

Densest 12 of 68 attested works shown, by occurrences per 10,000 attested tokens.

What it meant

1. formosus — de Vaan

formosus 'beautiful' (Jzr.+)>formula 'pretty appearance; register, formula, document' (P1+); deformis 'misshapen, disfigured' (Lucil.+); deformare 'to design, sketch; formica spoil' (P1-+), Informare 'to fashion, sketch' (Varro+), EM stress the length of ο in jorma, but there seems to have been a recent lengthening of short *o in front of -rC- (Leumann 1977: 114). Leumann derives formaster (with the pejorative … — [de Vaan, s.v. formosus, p. 247]

2. formōsus — Lewis & Short

formōsus (FORMONSVS,

Inscr. Grut. 669, 10;

I comp.: FORMONSIOR, Inscr. Fabr. p. 374, no. 169: formonsam, Verg. E. 1, 5 Rib.), a, um, adj. forma, I. B. 1., finely formed, beautiful, handsome (freq. and class; syn.: pulcher, speciosus, venustus, bellus).

A Of visible subjects: deum rotundum esse volunt, quod ea forma ullam negat esse pulchriorem Plato: at mihi vel cylindri vel quadrati vel coni vel pyramidis videtur esse formosior, Cic. N. D. 1, 10, 24: consideratur in homine, formosus an deformis, id. Inv. 1, 24, 35: virgines formosissimae, id. ib. 2, 1, 2: mulier, Hor. A. P. 4: vis formosa videri, id. C. 4, 13, 3: formosum pastor Corydon ardebat Alexin, Verg. E. 2, 1; cf.: formosi pecoris custos, formosior ipse, id. ib. 5, 44: Galatea hedera formosior alba, id. ib. 7, 38: boves, Ov. A. A. 1, 296: mater haedorum duorum, id. F. 5, 117: arma Sabina, Prop. 4 (5), 4, 32. so, formosius telum jaculabile, Ov. M. 7, 679: arbutus, Prop. 1, 2, 11 (dub.; Müll. felicius): Alcibiades, omnium aetatis suae multo formosissimus, Nep. Alcib. 1, 2: nunc frondent sylvae, nunc formosissimus annus, Verg. E. 3, 57: tempus (i. e. ver), Ov. F. 4, 129: aestas messibus, id. R. Am. 187: lux formosior omnibus Calendis, Mart. 10, 24, 2: habitus formosior, Quint. 9, 4, 8.—Prov.: Formonsa facies muta commendatio est, Pub. Syr. 169 (Rib.).—

B Rarely of abstr. subjects: nihil est virtute formosius, nihil pulchrius, Cic. Fam. 9, 14, 4.—Adv.: formōse, beautifully (very rare): Cupidinem formosum deum formose cubantem, App. M. 5, p. 168: saltare, id. ib. 6, p. 183: formosius, Quint. 8, 3, 10: formosissime, Aug. Conf. 1, 7.

In the wild

formosus Vergil, Eclogues 4
formose Ovid, Ars Amatoria 2.117
formosa Seneca, De Otio 8.5.3
formosa Jerome, Epistulae. Selections. 107.9
formosa Claudian, Carminum minorum corpusculum 11.3
formosum Apuleius, Metamorphoses 5.22

6 of 282 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. formosus (scan pp. 247-249; entry #604). Root candidates: *morrmka-, *morui-, *maruaka-.

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.