The corpus record — Latin

fossor

fossor · m

a digger

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

Where it lives

Epigrammata Ausonii de diversis rebus 1 · 2.74/10k
Saturae 1 · 2.21/10k
Res Rustica, Books I-IX 14 · 1.78/10k
Hamartigenia 1 · 1.56/10k
Carmina 1 · 0.78/10k
Carmina 1 · 0.75/10k
Georgicon 1 · 0.71/10k
Ex Ponto 1 · 0.48/10k
Tristia 1 · 0.44/10k
Saturae 1 · 0.4/10k
Silvae 1 · 0.4/10k
Epigrammata 2 · 0.36/10k

Densest 12 of 16 attested works shown, by occurrences per 10,000 attested tokens.

What it meant

fossor — Lewis & Short

fossor, ōris, m.id.,

I a digger, delver, ditcher.

I Lit.

A In gen. (poet. and in post-Aug. prose): et labefacta movens robustus jugera fossor, Verg. G. 2, 264: squalidus in magna compede fossor, Juv. 11, 80; Hor. C. 3, 18, 15; Mart. 7, 71, 4; Col. 11, 2, 38: ceu septa novus jam moenia laxet Fossor, i. e. a miner, sapper, Stat. Th. 2, 419.—

B In partic.

1 A miner, workman in a mine, Vitr. 7, 8, 1; Calp. Ecl. 4, 118 (cf. aurifossor).—

2 In late Lat., a grave-digger, Inscr. Orell. 4925 al.; cf. fossa, I. B. 3.—

3 In mal. part., a fornicator, Aus. Ep. 49; cf. fossa, I. B. 4.—

II Transf., in gen., in a contemptuous signif., a common laborer, a clown, Cat. 22, 10: cum sis cetera fossor, Pers. 5, 122.

In the wild

fossor Persius, Saturae 5.122
fossor Prudentius, Hamartigenia pr.1
fossori Columella, Res Rustica, Books I-IX 4.27.1
fossor Columella, Res Rustica, Books I-IX 5.5.3
fossor Catullus, Carmina lyrics.22.10
fossor Columella, Res Rustica, Books I-IX 3.15.2

6 of 30 attestations shown.

Where it came from

No etymology authority pointer is recorded for this lemma yet — an honest gap, not an omission.

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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.