The corpus record — Latin

oppidum

(fortified) town; barriers

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

Where it lives

De Bello Hispaniensi 79 · 130.51/10k
De Bello Africo 100 · 76.89/10k
Cimon 2 · 37.31/10k
De Bello Civili 110 · 34.06/10k
De bello Gallico 156 · 30.41/10k
Miltiades 4 · 29.99/10k
De Bello Alexandrino 31 · 29.73/10k
De Regibus 1 · 22.57/10k
Jugurtha 47 · 22.14/10k
Hamilcar 1 · 19.34/10k
Ab urbe condita libri, erklärt von M. Weissenborn, books 43-44 - 43 10 · 17.43/10k
Thrasybulus 1 · 16.67/10k

Densest 12 of 187 attested works shown, by occurrences per 10,000 attested tokens.

What it meant

1. oppidum — de Vaan

oppidum '(fortified) town; barriers' [n. o] (Naev.+) Derivatives: oppido 'utterly, entirely' (PL+). Pit. *op^pe/od-o- 'obstructing'. It cognates: U. perum, pefu, perso [acc.sg.], perume,persorne [acc.sg. + -en] 'ground' or 'place' < *pedom. PIE *ped-o- [n.] 'stepped' > 'place, step'. IE cognates: Hit. peda- [n.] 'place', HLuw. LOCUS-to- [n.] 'place', Skt pada- [n.] 'footstep, piece of ground', OAv. pada-, ΥΑ\.ραδα- … — [de Vaan, s.v. oppidum, p. 444]

2. oppĭdum — Lewis & Short

oppĭdum, i (

I gen. plur oppidūm, Sulp. ap. Cic. Fam. 4, 5, 4; old abl plur. oppedeis, Lex. Servil.), n. ob and pedum; Gr. pe/don; Sanscr pada-m, on or over the plain.

I A town (of towns other than Rome, which was called Urbs; though occasionally the term oppidum was applied to Rome) (class.): oppidum ab opi dictum, quod munitur opis causā, ubi sit: et quod opus est ad vitam gerundam, Varr. L. L. 5, § 141 Müll.; cf. Fest. p. 202: hi coetus (hominum) sedem primum certo loco domiciliorum causā constituerunt, quam cum locis manuque saepsissent, ejusmodi conjunctionem tectorum oppidum vel urbem appellaverunt, Cic. Rep. 1, 26, 41: Athenas anticum opulentum oppidum Contempla, Enn. ap. Non. 470, 5 (Trag. v. 324 Vahl.): fortunatum oppidum, Plaut. Cist. 1, 1, 81: Segesta est oppidum pervetus in Siciliā, Cic. Verr. 2, 4, 33, § 72: praesidia in oppidis, id. Att. 8, 11, B, § 1: Romana per oppida, Verg. G. 2, 176: urbe (i.e. Romā) oppidove ullo, Suet. Oth. 1.—Constr. with gen., of name of a town: Antiochiae, Cic. Att. 5, 18, 1.—Of Rome: per totum oppidum, all through the town, i.e. Rome, Varr. L. L. 6 § 14 Müll.: eos (legatos) in oppidum intromitti non placuit, Liv. 42, 36: oppidum Martis, Mart. 10, 30, 2.—In like manner oppidum denotes Athens, Nep. Milt. 4, 2; and Thebes, id. Pel. 1, 2.—In a fig. of an old man: ad hoc ego oppidum vetus continuo legiones meas Protinus adducam: hoc si expugno, etc., Plaut. Ps. 2, 1, 12.—

B Transf., the inhabitants of a town: illic oppida tota canem venerantur, nemo Dianam, Juv. 15, 8.—

II A fortified wood or forest, among the Britons, Caes. B. G. 5, 21. —

III The barriers of the circus (anteclass.): in Circo primo unde mittuntur equi, nunc dicuntur carceres, Naevius oppidum appellat, Varr. L. L. 5, § 153 Müll.; cf. Fest. p. 184 ib.

In the wild

oppidum Aulus Gellius, Noctes Atticae 10.16.3
oppidis Cicero, In C. Verrem 2.4.1
oppidum Pliny the Elder, Naturalis Historia 6.29.p2
oppida Livy, Ab urbe condita 1.9.45.17
oppidum Livy, Ab urbe condita 2.27.15.4
oppidorumque Pliny the Elder, Naturalis Historia 5.1.p1

6 of 2,503 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. oppidum (scan pp. 444-445; entry #1209). Root candidates: *pedo-, *pedro-, *ped-.
Ernout-Meillet, Dictionnaire etymologique de la langue latine Treated in Ernout-Meillet, Dictionnaire etymologique de la langue latine s.v. oppidum (scan p. 487; entry #7886).

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.