The corpus record — Latin

virus

venom, poison

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

Where it lives

Medicamina faciei femineae 1 · 16.31/10k
Dittochaeon 1 · 8.17/10k
Cento Nuptialis 1 · 7.33/10k
Ibis 2 · 5.09/10k
Hercules Oetaeus 5 · 4.44/10k
Medea 2 · 3.53/10k
de bello Gildonico 1 · 3.16/10k
Mosella 1 · 3.08/10k
Pharsalia 14 · 2.75/10k
De Scorpiace 2 · 2.51/10k
Contra Symmachum 3 · 2.5/10k
Georgicon 3 · 2.12/10k

Densest 12 of 46 attested works shown, by occurrences per 10,000 attested tokens.

What it meant

1. virus — de Vaan

virus 'venom, poison' [n. o] (Lucil.+; almost restricted to nom.acc.sg.) Derivatives: virosus 'with an unpleasant smell or taste' (Cato+). Pit. *weis-o-(s-) [n.] 'poison'. PIE *ueis [nom.], *uis-os [gen.] [n.] 'poison'. IE cognates: Mlr.^z [gender and stem unknown], W. gwy 'poison' < PCL *uiso- 'poison', SkL visa- [n.], YAv. visa- [n,] 'venom, poison'; YAv. vis [n.] 'poison, poisonous juice'; Gr. ΐος [m.j'poison', … — [de Vaan, s.v. virus, p. 696]

2. vīrus — Lewis & Short

vīrus, i, n.Sanscr. visham; Gr. i)o/s, poison,

I a slimy liquid, slime.

I In gen., of animals and plants, Verg. G. 3, 281; Col. 2, 14, 3; Plin. 19, 5, 27, § 89; 30, 6, 15, § 45; Stat. S. 1, 4, 104.—Of animal sperm or semen, Plin. 9, 50, 74, § 157.—

II In partic., in a bad sense.

A A poisonous liquid, poison, venom, virus (syn. venenum).

1 Lit., Cic. Arat. 432; Verg. G. 1, 129; 3, 419; Ov. Tr. 3, 10, 64; Plin. 34, 17, 48, § 160: amatorium, id. 8, 22, 34, § 83.—

2 Trop.: evomere virus acerbitatis suae, Cic. Lael. 23, 87: futile virus linguae, Sil. 11, 560: mentis, id. 9, 476; Mart. 13, 2, 8.—

B An offensive odor, stench, Lucr. 2, 853; Col. 1, 5, 6; Plin. 11, 53, 115, § 277; 27, 12, 83, § 107; 35, 15, 52, § 185: odoris, an offensive pungency, id. 28, 3, 6, § 31; 28, 7, 23, § 79.—

C A sharp, saline taste; of sea-water, Lucr. 2, 476; 5, 269; 6, 635.—Of wine, Plin. 14, 20, 25, § 124.

3. virus — Walde–Hofmann

virus, - n. ,zühe Flüssigkeit, Schleim, Saft; bes. Gift; Schärfe, Bitterkeit“ (seit Lucil., Lucr. und Cie.), ezrulentus, -a,-um „giftig“ (Gell., virulentia,-aef. „Gestank, Brühe“ seit Tert.), virösus, -a,-um „sc leimig, stinkend“ (Cato agr. 257,11): zu gr. i6g „Gift“, ai. visdm n. „Gift“, visah „gifug“, vit (vis-) "faeces', av. vid, viga- „Gift“, ir. (Corm.) ft (= virus, i6c) „Gift* (Curtius 389, Vanicek 284), kymr. … — [Walde–Hofmann, s.v. virus, p. 1708]

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. virus (scan pp. 696-697; entry #2002). Root candidates: *uiso-, *mros-.
Walde-Hofmann, Lateinisches etymologisches Worterbuch Treated in Walde-Hofmann, Lateinisches etymologisches Worterbuch s.v. virus (scan p. 1708; entry #3274).

Downloads

Word record (JSON)·Concordance (CSV)·Frequencies (CSV)·Cite (BibTeX)

CC BY 4.0 with receipt attribution — every file carries its license line. What is exportable

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.