The corpus record — Latin

mendacium

a lie

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

Where it lives

Lydia, Appendix Vergiliana 1 · 18.76/10k
Pro Q. Ligario 3 · 9.15/10k
Pro Q. Roscio Comoedo 4 · 8.4/10k
De Praescriptionibus Hereticorum 6 · 7.22/10k
Apologia 15 · 6.98/10k
Octavius 8 · 6.9/10k
Otho 1 · 6.34/10k
De Corona 3 · 6.17/10k
Pseudolus 5 · 4.52/10k
De idolatria 3 · 4.35/10k
De Carne Christi 4 · 4.21/10k
Vitellius 1 · 4.15/10k

Densest 12 of 100 attested works shown, by occurrences per 10,000 attested tokens.

What it meant

1. mendacium — de Vaan

mendacium 'a lie' (P1.+), mendacUoquus 'lying5 (PL); mendicus 'beggarly, destitute' (P1.+), mendicus [m.] 'beggar5 (PL+), mendicimdnium 'beggary' (Lab-), mendTcitas 'destitution' (PL+), mendicare 'to beg, be a begger' (P1.+), mendicabulum 'a beggar's instrument' (P1.+), mendiculus 'beggarly' (PI.). Pit. *m(e)ndo-/a-. IE cognates: Olr. mennar 'blemish' (< *mendrra-\ mind 'sign, mark' (< *mpdu?\ W. mann 'place5, … — [de Vaan, s.v. mendacium, p. 386]

2. mendācĭum — Lewis & Short

mendācĭum, ii, n.mendax,

I a lie, untruth, falsehood.

I Lit. (class.): dicere alicui mendacium de re aliquā, Plaut. Bacch. 4, 9, 33: mendacio fallere, Cic. Mur. 30, 62: vatum, Ov. F. 6, 253: famae, id. ib. 4, 311: immensa spirant mendacia, Juv. 7, 111: Titiae meae, cum quā sine mendacio vixi, i. e. honestly, without hypocrisy, Dig. 34, 2, 36: prophetāsti mendacium, Vulg. Jer. 20, 6; cf. id. ib. 27, 10: credere mendacio, to believe a lie, id. 2 Thess. 2, 11.—

B Esp., a fable, fiction (opp. historic truth): poëtarum, Curt. 3, 1, 4.—

II Transf., of things, a counterfeit (post-Aug.): neque est imitabilior alia mendacio vitri, Plin. 37, 8, 33, § 112; 35, 6, 29, § 48.

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. mendacium (scan p. 386; entry #1027). Root candidates: *mond-.

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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.