The corpus record — Latin

hircus

he-goat

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

Where it lives

Epodon 2 · 6.65/10k
Casina 1 · 1.29/10k
Menaechmi 1 · 1.05/10k
Mostellaria 1 · 1.04/10k
Fabulae Aesopiae 1 · 0.91/10k
Elegiae 1 · 0.81/10k
Carmina 1 · 0.78/10k
Epigrammata 4 · 0.71/10k
Georgicon 1 · 0.71/10k
Satyricon 2 · 0.66/10k
Fasti 1 · 0.32/10k

What it meant

1. hircus — de Vaan

hircus 'he-goat' [m. ο] (ΡΙ.+; variants ircus, Sabine fircus Varro) Derivatives: hircmus 'like a goat, of a goat* (P1.+), hircdsus 'smelling like a goat' (PI.+); hirquitallus 'adolescent boy' (P^ul. ex F.); maybe hirpus 'wolF (Samnitic). WH and IEW lump together a larger number of words, the connection of which is unwarranted. The combination of hire- : hirqu- : Sab. hirp- is used to suggest a preform */jerfcw-, but … — [de Vaan, s.v. hircus, p. 300]

2. hircus — Lewis & Short

hircus (also hircŭus and ircus; cf.

Quint. 1, 5, 20;

I and the Sabine form, FIRCUS, Varr. L. L. 5, § 97 Müll.; cf. haedus init.), i, m., a he-goat, buck (cf. haedus, caper).

I Lit., Verg. E. 3, 8; 91; id. G. 3, 312; Hor. Epod. 16, 34; id. A. P. 220 (Plin. 37, 4, 15, § 60: foedissimum animalium).—

II Transf.

A Like caper, a goatish smell, the rank smell of the armpits: hircum ab alis (sapere), Plaut. Ps. 2, 4, 48: alarum, Cat. 71, 1: an gravis hirsutis cubet hircus in alis, Hor. Epod. 12, 5: pastillos Rufillus olet, Gargonius hircum, id. S. 1, 2, 27; 1, 4, 92.—

B An epithet applied to a filthy person: hircus, hara suis, Plaut. Most. 1, 1, 38: propter operam illius hirqui improbi edentuli, id. Cas. 3, 2, 20.—

C Of voluptuous persons, id. Merc. 2, 2, 1; 4; Cat. 37, 5; Poët. Atell. ap. Suet. Tib. 45.

In the wild

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. hircus (scan p. 300; entry #763).

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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.