The corpus record — Latin

lena

lena · f

a bawd, procuress

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

Where it lives

Cistellaria 19 · 36.33/10k
Dirae, Appendix Vergiliana 1 · 15.41/10k
Asinaria 8 · 9.9/10k
Epithalamium de nuptiis Honorii Augusti 1 · 4.57/10k
Elegiae 4 · 3.24/10k
Epigrammata Ausonii de diversis rebus 1 · 2.74/10k
Amores 4 · 2.56/10k
De Corona 1 · 2.06/10k
Miles Gloriosus 2 · 1.58/10k
In Eutropium 1 · 1.39/10k
Ars Amatoria 2 · 1.34/10k
Persa 1 · 1.27/10k

Densest 12 of 20 attested works shown, by occurrences per 10,000 attested tokens.

What it meant

1. lēna — Lewis & Short

lēna, ae, f.leno,

I a bawd, procuress.

I Lit.: lenas eas dicimus, quae mulieres quaestuarias prostituunt. Lenam accipiemus et eam, quae alterius nomine hoc vitae genus exercet, Dig. 23, 2, 43: omnes sunt lenae levifidae, Plaut. Pers. 2, 2, 61; id. Truc. 2, 1, 14; id. As. 1, 3, 23: callida, Tib. 1, 6, 11 (5, 48): improba, Ov. Am. 1, 15, 17.— In apposition: lena anus, an old go-between, Ov. Am. 3, 5, 40: Isiaca, i. e. Isis, Juv. 6, 489: ingenui prohibentur ducere ... et lenam et a lenone lenave manumissam, Ulp. Fragm. 13, 2.—

II Transf., she that entices, allures, seduces; a female enticer, a seductress: non vides, quam blanda conciliatrix, et quasi sui sit lena natura? Cic. N. D. 1, 27, 77: pro facie multis vox sua lena fuit, Ov. A. A. 3, 316: pictura lena, Claud. Nupt. Honor. et Mar. 24.

2. lena — Walde–Hofmann

lena, -ae f. ,Kupplerin^; Adj. „anlockend“ (seit Plaut.), leno, -önis m, „Kuppler“ (seit Plt, ebenso Dem. Jenullus und lenunculus [vgl. auch embus), ferner lenönius, -a, -um und lànócinium, -i n. „Kuppelei; Lockung, Reiz, Schmeichelei* |lenócinor „treibe Kuppelei; Schmeichle* seit Cic., lenöcinätio, -Gtor, -ämentum Spätl.; zur Bildung vgl. latrücinor]; Denom. /énó, -äre „verkuppeln“ Anth,): nach Walde LEW.? 421, … — [Walde–Hofmann, s.v. lena, p. 814]

In the wild

lenam Plautus, Asinaria 4.1
Lena Plautus, Cistellaria 1.1
Lena Plautus, Cistellaria 1.1
lena Ovid, Ars Amatoria 3.316
lenae Plautus, Persa 2.2
lenas Bede, Historiam ecclesiasticam gentis Anglorum 4.29.p1

6 of 55 attestations shown.

Where it came from

Ernout-Meillet, Dictionnaire etymologique de la langue latine Treated in Ernout-Meillet, Dictionnaire etymologique de la langue latine s.v. léna (scan p. 131; entry #1940).
Walde-Hofmann, Lateinisches etymologisches Worterbuch Treated in Walde-Hofmann, Lateinisches etymologisches Worterbuch s.v. lena (scan pp. 814-818; entry #1523). Root candidates: *lei-, *enth-, *ghind-.

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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.