LOGOI

The corpus record — Latin

mulier

mulier · f

a woman, a female

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

Where it lives

Densest 12 of 189 attested works shown, by occurrences per 10,000 attested tokens.

What it meant

1. mŭlĭer — Lewis & Short

mŭlĭer, ĕris, f.mollior, comp. of mollis, q. v.,

I a woman, a female, whether married or not.
I Lit.
A In gen., Plaut. Poen. 1, 2, 36: mulieres omnes propter infirmitatem consilii, majores in tutorum potestate esse voluerunt, Cic. Mur. 12, 27; of a virgin, Cic. Verr. 2, 1, 25, § 64: mulieres omnes dicuntur, quaecumque sexūs feminini sunt, Dig. 34, 2, 26: nil non permittit mulier sibi, Juv. 6, 457.—
B In partic., a wife, opp. to a maid: ecqua virgo sit aut mulier digna, etc., Cic. Verr. 2, 1, 24, § 63: Cicero objurgantibus, quod sexagenarius Publiliam virginem duxisset, "cras mulier erit" inquit, Quint. 6, 3, 75: si virgo fuit primo, postea mulier, Lact. 1, 17, 8 al.: pudica mulier, Hor. Epod. 2, 39; Suet. Vit. 2; Inscr Orell. 4661.—
II Transf., as a term of reproach, a woman, i. e. a coward, poltroon: non me arbitratur militem, sed mulierem, Plaut. Bacch. 4, 8, 4.

2. mulier — Walde–Hofmann

mulier, -eris f. „das Weib als Trägerin des weiblichen Charakters"; jünger „die verheiratete Frau (zunächst als Stand oder Typus) im Gegensatz zur virgö“ (vgl. z. B. Ulp. dig. 18, 1, 11, 1, s. Delbrück Verw. 49, Köhm Alat, Forsch. 90; seit XII tab. und Naev., rom, [unter teilweiser Yerdrängung von wwor]; muliebris ["mulies-ris] „weiblich“ seit Plaut, [Ntr. PL -a „weibliche Dinge, Weiberschmuck, weibliche … — [Walde–Hofmann, s.v. mulier, p. 1028]

In the wild

6 of 1,752 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. mulier (scan pp. 442-443; entry #7127).
  • Walde-Hofmann, Lateinisches etymologisches Worterbuch Treated in Walde-Hofmann, Lateinisches etymologisches Worterbuch s.v. mulier (scan pp. 1028-1030; entry #1802). Root candidates: *mel-, *molo-, *molj-.

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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.