The corpus record — Latin

nimis

too much

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

Where it lives

Iphicrates 1 · 24.45/10k
Pseudolus 14 · 12.65/10k
Miles Gloriosus 16 · 12.62/10k
Persa 9 · 11.45/10k
Pro M. Marcello 3 · 10.84/10k
Epidicus 7 · 10.75/10k
Aulularia 7 · 10.13/10k
Menaechmi 9 · 9.47/10k
Amphitruo 9 · 9.16/10k
Truculentus 7 · 8.54/10k
Stichus 5 · 8.05/10k
Ludus Septem Sapientum 1 · 7.58/10k

Densest 12 of 185 attested works shown, by occurrences per 10,000 attested tokens.

What it meant

1. nimis — de Vaan

nimis 'too much' [adv.] (Andr.+) Derivatives:\nimiumis [adj.] 'excessive, too much' (Naev.+). Pit *«e *meijis (or *ne *mis) 'not too little, quite a lot'. PIE *m(e)ihris- 'less'. IE cognates: see s.v. minor, Nimius must be a recent adjectivization of nimis. In the account of Meiser 1998, nimis < * nimis (iambic shortening) continues *ne meis 'not too little', with adverbial *meiH-is of the adj. *meihr 'little, few* … — [de Vaan, s.v. nimis, p. 423]

2. nĭmis — Lewis & Short

nĭmis, adv.ni-, ne-, and root ma-, to measure; cf.: metior, mensa, metare, etc.; hence,

I too much, overmuch, excessively, beyond measure.

I Lit.: Chremes nimis graviter cruciat adulescentulum nimisque inhumane, too severely ... too inhumanly, Ter. Heaut. 5, 5, 1: nec nimis valde nec nimis saepe, Cic. Leg. 3, 1, 1: heu nimis longo satiate ludo, Hor. C. 1, 2, 37: nimis castus Bellerophon, id. ib. 3, 7, 14: felix heu nimis, Stat. S. 2, 7, 24: nimis dixi, Plin. Pan. 45.—

(b) With gen.: nimis insidiarum, Cic. Or. 51, 170: haec loca lucis habent nimis, Ov. F. 6, 115.—

B With a preceding negative, not too much, not very much, not altogether, not very: Philotimi litterae me quidem non nimis, sed eos admodum delectārunt, Cic. Att. 7, 24, 1: ea dicis non nimis deesse nobis, id. de Or. 1, 29, 133: Caecilium non nimis hanc causam severe, non nimis accurate, non nimis diligenter acturum, id. Div. in Caecil. 22, 71: illud non nimis probo, quod scribis, id. Fam. 12, 30, 15: praesidium non nimis firmum, Caes. B. G. 7, 36: haud nimis amplum, Liv. 8, 4. —

II Transf., beyond measure, exceedingly (ante-class.): nimis velim lapidem, etc., Plaut. Most. 1, 3, 119: nimis id genus ego odi male, id. Rud. 4, 2, 15; id. Am. 1, 1, 63; Ter. Eun. 4, 7, 16.—Also strengthened by quam or tandem, very much, in the highest degree: nimis quam formido, ne, etc., Plaut. Most. 2, 2, 79; id. Truc. 2, 5, 15: nimis tandem contemnor, id. Ps. 4, 1, 11; id. Pers. 2, 1, 2.—Prov.: ne quid nimis, Ter. And. 1, 1, 34.

In the wild

nimis Plautus, Mostellaria 2.2
Nímis Plautus, Pseudolus 1.2
nimis Seneca the Elder, Controversiae 2.2.4
nimis Livy, Ab urbe condita 2.26.26.11
nimis Livy, Ab urbe condita 2.22.60.5
nimis Aulus Gellius, Noctes Atticae 15.23.1

6 of 899 attestations shown.

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. nimis (scan pp. 423-424; entry #1147). Root candidates: *meiH-.
Ernout-Meillet, Dictionnaire etymologique de la langue latine Treated in Ernout-Meillet, Dictionnaire etymologique de la langue latine s.v. nimis (scan p. 509; entry #8313).

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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.