The corpus record — Latin

radius

ray of light; spoke

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

Where it lives

Adversus Praxean 13 · 8.79/10k
Panegyricus de tertio consulatu Honorii Augusti 1 · 7.24/10k
Panegyricus de sexto consulatu Honorii Augusti 3 · 7.21/10k
De Rerum Natura 27 · 5.54/10k
Panegyricus de quarto consulatu Honorii Augusti 2 · 5.05/10k
Epithalamium de nuptiis Honorii Augusti 1 · 4.57/10k
De Architectura 23 · 3.99/10k
de consulatu Stilichonis 3 · 3.96/10k
Culex, Appendix Vergiliana 1 · 3.83/10k
de Origine et Situ Germanorum Liber 2 · 3.63/10k
Carminum minorum corpusculum 3 · 3.55/10k
Georgicon 5 · 3.53/10k

Densest 12 of 78 attested works shown, by occurrences per 10,000 attested tokens.

What it meant

1. radius — de Vaan

radius 'ray of light; spoke' [m. ο] (Ρ1.+) Derivatives: radiosus 'radiant' (Pl.+)> radiatus 'radiant; with spokes' (Varro+), — [de Vaan, s.v. radius, p. 526]

2. rădĭus — Lewis & Short

rădĭus, ii, m.cf.: radix, ramus,

I a staff, rod.

I In gen.: acuti radii immissi, stakes, Liv. 33, 5, 11: ferreus, Plin. 10, 42, 58, § 117.—

B In partic.

1 A spoke of a wheel, Plin. 16, 40, 76, § 206; Verg. G. 2, 444; id. A. 6, 616; Ov. M. 2, 108; 2, 317; Val. Fl. 6, 414: inter radios rotarum, Curt. 4, 9, 5; Plin. 16, 40, 76, § 206.—

2 In mathematics,

a A staff, rod, for measuring, etc., Cic. Tusc. 5, 23, 64; Verg. E. 3, 41; id. A. 6, 850; Macr. S. 7, 2; Tert. Idol. 9. —

b A semidiameter, radius of a circle, Cic. Univ. 6. —

3 In weaving, a shuttle, Ov. M. 6, 56; 132; Lucr. 5, 1352; Verg. A. 9, 476.—

4 In zoology,

a The spur of many kinds of birds, Plin. 11, 47, 107, § 257; esp. of the cock, id. 30, 11, 29, § 97. —

b The sting above the tail of the fish pastinaca, Plin. 9, 48, 72, § 155; 32, 2, 12, § 25. —

5 In botany, a kind of long olive, Verg. G. 2, 86; Col. 5, 8, 4; id. Arb. 17, 3; Plin. 15, 3, 4, § 13. A sub-species of the same, called radius major, Cato, R. R. 6, 1; Varr. R. R. 1, 24.—

6 In anatomy, the radius, the exterior bone of the forearm, Gr. kerki/s, Cels. 8, 1. —

7 Radius virilis = membrum virile, Cael. Aur. Acut. 3, 14, 115.—

II A beam or ray of any shining object; of the sun, Plaut. Mil. 1, 1, 2; Lucr. 1, 48; 2, 117; Cic. Fin. 5, 24, 71; Verg. A. 4, 119; 7, 25; Tert. Res. Carn. 47; of lightning, Verg. A. 8, 429; Val. Fl. 6, 55; of the eyes, Gell. 5, 16, 2; of the halo around the heads of divine or deified personages: aurati, Verg. A. 12, 163; cf. radio, II.

In the wild

radios Statius, Thebais 6.581
radii Pliny the Elder, Naturalis Historia 2.18
radius Bede, Historiam ecclesiasticam gentis Anglorum 4.7
radiis Claudian, Panegyricus de sexto consulatu Honorii Augusti 1.539
radiis Ovid, Ars Amatoria 1.724
radiis Propertius, Elegiae 1.3.33

6 of 312 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. radius (scan p. 526; entry #1457).
Ernout-Meillet, Dictionnaire etymologique de la langue latine Treated in Ernout-Meillet, Dictionnaire etymologique de la langue latine s.v. radius (scan p. 586; entry #9621).

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.