The corpus record — Latin

hamus

hook, fish-hook

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

Where it lives

Mosella 3 · 9.23/10k
Ars Amatoria 4 · 2.69/10k
Rudens 3 · 2.53/10k
Saturae 1 · 2.21/10k
Epistulae 2 · 2.02/10k
Remedia Amoris 1 · 1.91/10k
Psychomachia 1 · 1.67/10k
Curculio 1 · 1.62/10k
Divus Augustus 2 · 1.49/10k
de consulatu Stilichonis 1 · 1.32/10k
Hercules 1 · 1.31/10k
Carminum minorum corpusculum 1 · 1.18/10k

Densest 12 of 37 attested works shown, by occurrences per 10,000 attested tokens.

What it meant

1. hamus — de Vaan

hamus 'hook, fish-hook' [m. ο] (P1.+) Derivatives: hamatilis 'employing hooks' (PL), hamatus 'furnished with hooks' (Lucr.+X hamiota 'member of the 'fishing fraternity" (PL+). Only the Gr. words χαμός and χαβός 'curved' are close in form and meaning, but the formal vacillation within Greek is unexplained, and the vowel length of Latin cannot be explained from a loan. No etymology. ; BibL: WH I: 633, EM 289. — [de Vaan, s.v. hamus, p. 293]

2. hāmus — Lewis & Short

hāmus, i, m.kindr. with a(p-, a(/ptw,

I a hook.

I Lit.

A In gen.: taleae pedem longae, ferreis hamis infixis, totae in terram infodiebantur, Caes. B. G. 7, 73 fin.: hamis ferreis pectitur stupa, heckles, Plin. 19, 1, 3, § 17: loricam consertam hamis, little hooks, Verg. A. 3, 467.—

B In partic.

1 A fish-hook; hence, in gen., an angle (so most freq.): hisce hami atque haec harundines sunt nobis quaestu, Plaut. Rud. 2, 1, 5: divine Plato escam malorum appellat voluptatem, quod ea videlicet homines capiantur, ut pisces hamo, * Cic. de Sen. 13, 44 (al. om. hamo; cf. Klotz in h. l.): occultum visus decurrere piscis ad hamum, Hor. Ep. 1, 7, 74; 1, 16, 51; Ov. M. 3, 586; 15, 101; id. H. 19, 13 et saep.: instrumento piscatoris legato, ... hami quoque et cetera ejusmodi usibus destinata debentur, Paul. Sent. 3, 6, 66.—

b Transf., as a figure of enticement, allurement, artifice (poet. and in post-Aug. prose): meus hic est: hamum vorat, Plaut. Truc. 1, 1, 21; id. Curc. 3, 61: si vafer unus et alter Insidiatorem praeroso fugerit hamo, Hor. S. 2, 5, 25: munera magna quidem misit, sed misit in hamo, Mart. 6, 63, 5; cf.: munera illitos cibis hamos aemulabantur, Plin. Pan. 43 fin. (for which: viscata hamataque munera, id. Ep. 9, 30, 2).—

2 A hook as a surgical instrument, Cels. 7, 7, 15.—

II Transf., of things hooked or crooked, the talons of a hawk, Ov. M. 11, 342; thorns, id. de Nuce, 115; a kind of pastry. App. M. 10, p. 245.

In the wild

hamis Apuleius, Apologia 30
hamis Vergil, Aeneid 3.467
hamo Ovid, Metamorphoses 15.101
hamos Ovid, Metamorphoses 13.934
hamis Ausonius, Mosella pr.126
hamumque Pliny the Younger, Letters 9.7.4

6 of 85 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. hamus (scan p. 293; entry #744).
Ernout-Meillet, Dictionnaire etymologique de la langue latine Treated in Ernout-Meillet, Dictionnaire etymologique de la langue latine s.v. hamus (scan p. 313; entry #4920).

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.