The corpus record — Latin

nefandus

nefandus · adj

impious, heinous, execrable, abominable

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

Where it lives

Phaedra 10 · 14.06/10k
Octavia 7 · 13.38/10k
Phoenissae 5 · 12.23/10k
Oedipus 5 · 8.43/10k
Dittochaeon 1 · 8.17/10k
Agamemnon 3 · 5.39/10k
In Rufinum 3 · 5.24/10k
Thyestes 3 · 4.76/10k
Troades 3 · 4.4/10k
Medea 2 · 3.53/10k
De Bello Hispaniensi 2 · 3.3/10k
Pharsalia 16 · 3.14/10k

Densest 12 of 72 attested works shown, by occurrences per 10,000 attested tokens.

What it meant

nĕfandus — Lewis & Short

nĕfandus, a, um, adj.ne-fari, lit. not to be mentioned, unmentionable; hence,

I impious, heinous, execrable, abominable (mostly post-Aug.; syn. infandus): sperate deos memores fandi atque nefandi, i. e. wrong, impiety, Verg. A. 1, 543: nefandum adulterium, Cic. Fragm. ap. Quint. 5, 11, 12 (al. nefarium): nefandum vehiculum, Liv. 1, 59: nefandissima quaeque tyrannicae crudelitatis exercuit, Just. 16, 4, 11: fraus, Juv. 13, 174: sacri, id. 15, 116.—Of persons: homo nefandus, Plin. 28, 1, 2, § 9: nefandi homines, Quint. 1, 3, 17.—Sup.: aususne es, nefandissimum caput? etc., Just. 18, 7, 10.—Hence, adv.: nĕfandē, impiously: multa nefande ausi, Sall. Fragm. ap. Prisc. p. 993 P. (dub: Dietsch. H. 1, 62, nefanda).—Sup.: nefandissime, Cassiod. Hist. Eccl. 10, 28.

In the wild

nefandam Ovid, Metamorphoses 6.601
nefanda Livy, Ab urbe condita 1.6.17.7
nefandae Silius Italicus, Punica 10.585
nefandus Prudentius, Peristephanon Liber 10.1109
nefandoque Livy, Ab urbe condita, books 6-10 - 10 p41
nefando Cicero, De Domo Sua Ad Pontifices 132

6 of 225 attestations shown.

Where it came from

No etymology authority pointer is recorded for this lemma yet — an honest gap, not an omission.

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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.