The corpus record — Latin

mica

grain, crumb

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

Where it lives

De agri cultura 1 · 0.64/10k
Peristephanon Liber 1 · 0.57/10k
Satyricon 1 · 0.33/10k
Fasti 1 · 0.32/10k
De Beneficiis 1 · 0.22/10k
De Rerum Natura 1 · 0.21/10k
Res Gestae 1 · 0.08/10k
Naturalis Historia 1 · 0.03/10k

What it meant

1. mica — de Vaan

mica 'grain, crumb' [f. a] (Cato+) Pit. *meik-a-. PIE *meik-h2- 'blinking*. Nyman 1987 shows that mica originally referred to a 'grain of salt1, and subsequently to any 'glittering crystal(line) particle*. These semantics lead him to derive mica from the same root as micare 'to quiver, dart, flash*, viz. as the 'glittering* particle. This explanation is formally more attractive that the traditional connection with … — [de Vaan, s.v. mica, p. 392]

2. mīca — Lewis & Short

mīca, ae, f.root smic-; Gr. smikro/s, mikro/s; cf. micula; O. Germ. smahan, to belittle,

I a crumb, little bit, morsel, grain (poet. and in post-Aug. prose).

I Lit.: mica panis, Petr. 42: auri, Lucr. 1, 839: marmoris, Plin. 33, 4, 21, § 68: salis, a grain of salt, id. 22, 14, 16, § 37: amomi, id. 12, 18, 41, § 83: saliens (i. e. salis) mica, Hor. C. 3, 23, 12: tus in micas friatur, Plin. 12, 14, 32, § 65: de micis puerorum, Vulg. Marc. 7, 28.—

II Transf.

A A small diningroom, Mart. 2, 59, 1; Sen. Ep. 51, 12.—

B In gen., a little bit, a grain: nulla in tam magno est corpore mica salis, a grain of sense, Cat. 86, 3.

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. mica (scan p. 392; entry #1046). Root candidates: *mikaje-, *mikH-.
Ernout-Meillet, Dictionnaire etymologique de la langue latine Treated in Ernout-Meillet, Dictionnaire etymologique de la langue latine s.v. mica (scan p. 426; entry #6825).

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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.