The corpus record — Latin

mendicus

a beggar, mendicant

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

Where it lives

Epitaphia heroum qui bello Troico interfuerunt 1 · 8.33/10k
Avidius Cassius 1 · 3.83/10k
De Constantia 2 · 3.78/10k
Stichus 2 · 3.22/10k
Adversus Marcionem 17 · 2.05/10k
Antoninus Heliogabalus 1 · 1.73/10k
Rudens 2 · 1.69/10k
Aulularia 1 · 1.45/10k
Excerpta Controversiae 3 · 1.4/10k
Controversiae 7 · 1.06/10k
Menaechmi 1 · 1.05/10k
Trinummus 1 · 1.02/10k

Densest 12 of 24 attested works shown, by occurrences per 10,000 attested tokens.

What it meant

mendīcus — Lewis & Short

mendīcus, a, um,

I adj., beggarly, needy, in want, indigent (class.).

I Lit.: paupertas si malum est, mendicus esse beatus nemo potest, Cic. Fin. 5, 28, 84; cf.: solos sapientes esse, si mendicissimi (sint), divites, id. Mur. 29, 61: mendicior, Tert. de Anim. 33: prandia, Mart. 14, 81.—As subst.: mendīcus, i, m., a beggar, mendicant: mendicum malim mendicando vincere, Quam, etc., Plaut. Bacch. 3, 4, 16: mendici, i. e. the priests of Cybele, Hor. S. 1, 2, 2.—As a term of abuse, a beggar, ragamuffin, Ter. And. 4, 5, 20.—

II Transf., in gen., poor, paltry, mean, sorry, pitiful: instrumentum mendicum, Cic. de Or. 3, 24, 92.—Hence, adv.: mendīcē, in a beggarly manner, meanly (post-Aug. and post-class.): non tam mendice tecum agam, sed plenā manu, Sen. Ep. 33, 6.—Comp.: ne mendicius patre coenaret, Tert. Pall. 5.

Where it came from

Ernout-Meillet, Dictionnaire etymologique de la langue latine Treated in Ernout-Meillet, Dictionnaire etymologique de la langue latine s.v. mendicus (scan p. 420; entry #6733).

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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.