The corpus record — Latin

graculus

jackdaw

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

Where it lives

Fabulae Aesopiae 2 · 1.82/10k
Amores 1 · 0.64/10k
Epigrammata 1 · 0.18/10k
Noctes Atticae 1 · 0.09/10k
Res Gestae 1 · 0.08/10k
Institutio Oratoria 1 · 0.06/10k
Naturalis Historia 2 · 0.05/10k

What it meant

1. graculus — de Vaan

graculus 'jackdaw' [m. o] (Varro+) IE cognates: RuCS, ORu. grakati, Is. gracu 'to caw, croak' < PSl. *grakati; RuCS, ORu. gbrkati 'to coo\ Ru. (dial.) gorkat' < PSl. *gbrkati; OIc. kraka 'crow', krakr 'raven', OE *cracian^ cracettan 'to crow (of raven)' < pre-Gm. *grag-. Lat graculus could formally correspond with Slavic *gra-ft-, but in view of the obviously onomatopoeic character of gra-, this does not suffice to … — [de Vaan, s.v. graculus, p. 282]

2. grācŭlus — Lewis & Short

grācŭlus (gracc-), i, m.from its note gra gra, Quint. 1, 6, 37; Isid. Orig. 12, 7, 45,

I a jackdaw, Corvus monedula, Linn.; Plin. 11, 37, 79, § 201; 11, 47, 107, § 256; 8, 27, 41, § 101; Phaedr. 1, 3, 4; Mart. 1, 116, 6. —

b Prov.

(a) Vetus adagium est: Nihil cum fidibus graculo, i. e. ignorant persons have nothing to do with poetry, Gell. N. A. praef. § 19.—

(b) Graculus Aesopi, i. e. one who decks himself out in borrowed plumes, makes a fine show with other people's property, Tert. adv. Val. 12 (cf. Phaedr. 1, 3).

In the wild

graculos Pliny the Elder, Naturalis Historia 11.29.p3
graculos Quintilian, Institutio Oratoria 1.6.37
graculorum Pliny the Elder, Naturalis Historia 10.29.p1
graculorum Aulus Gellius, Noctes Atticae 1.15.11
graculorum Ammianus Marcellinus, Res Gestae 22.6.2
graculus Ovid, Amores 2.6.34

6 of 9 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. graculus (scan pp. 282-283; entry #707). Root candidates: *grag-, *greh2-.
Ernout-Meillet, Dictionnaire etymologique de la langue latine Treated in Ernout-Meillet, Dictionnaire etymologique de la langue latine s.v. graculus (scan p. 303; entry #4764).

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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.