The corpus record — Latin

penis

tail, penis

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

Where it lives

De Testimionio Animae 4 · 17.9/10k
De Patientia 7 · 15.46/10k
Florida 10 · 12.7/10k
De Baptismo 5 · 11.71/10k
De Pallio 4 · 11.67/10k
Historiae 4 · 9.86/10k
Ad Uxorem 4 · 9.63/10k
Apologeticum 19 · 9.52/10k
De Spectaculis 6 · 9.43/10k
De Paenitentia 3 · 7.36/10k
De idolatria 5 · 7.25/10k
Themistocles 1 · 5.84/10k

Densest 12 of 103 attested works shown, by occurrences per 10,000 attested tokens.

What it meant

1. penis — de Vaan

penis 'tail, penis' [m* i] (Naev.H-) Derivatives: penitus 'furnished with a tail' (Naev. apud Fest), peniculus 'brush, sponge' (¥\.+\ peniculamentum 'train (cff a garment)' (Enn.). Pit *petsni- 4tail\ It is generally assumed that penis directly reflects PIE *pes-ni- 'penis', as attested in Hit *pesan-I pesn- / pisen- 'man, male' [c] < *pes-dn, *pes-(e)n-\ Skt pasas- [n.], Gr. πέος [η.] 'penis' < *pes-os-; maybe also … — [de Vaan, s.v. penis, p. 472]

2. pēnis — Lewis & Short

pēnis, is, m. (to\ pe/os],

abl. peni, Naev. ap. Fest. p. 230 Müll.) [

I a tail.

I In gen. (ante-class.): caudam antiqui penem vocabant, Cic. Fam. 9, 22, 2: ... lares ludentes peni pinxit bubulo, Naev. ap. Fest. p. 230 Müll.—

II In partic., = membrum virile, the penis; also, by meton., for lust (class.): hodie penis est in obscenis, Cic. Fam. 9, 22, 2: ganeo, manu, ventre, pene bona patria laceraverat, Sall. C. 14, 2; Hor. Epod. 12, 8; Juv. 9, 43; Arn. 5, 18.—In a paron. with paene, Plaut. Truc. 2, 6, 37.

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. penis (scan p. 472; entry #1301). Root candidates: *petsni-, *pes-.
Ernout-Meillet, Dictionnaire etymologique de la langue latine Treated in Ernout-Meillet, Dictionnaire etymologique de la langue latine s.v. penis (scan p. 520; entry #8494).

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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.