The corpus record — Latin

viscum

mistletoe; bird-lime from the berries of the mistletoe

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

Where it lives

Poenulus 2 · 1.81/10k
Satyrarum libri 2 · 1.41/10k
De Medicina 8 · 0.78/10k
Naturalis Historia 29 · 0.73/10k
De agri cultura 1 · 0.64/10k
De Ira 1 · 0.45/10k
Saturae 1 · 0.4/10k
Metamorphoses 1 · 0.19/10k
Aeneid 1 · 0.16/10k
Res Rustica, Books I-IX 1 · 0.13/10k

What it meant

1. viscum — de Vaan

viscum 'mistletoe; bird-lime from the berries of the mistletoe' [η. ο] (Ρ1.+; PL also nom.sg. viscus) Derivatives: viscatus * smeared with bird-lime' (Lucil.+). Pit. *wisko-7 IE cognates: Gr. ΐξός [m.] 'mistletoe, -berry, the bird-lime prepared from if, OHG wihsela 4 morello\ Ru. visnja * cherry'. A PIE word or a European loanword indicating * mistletoe' or another fruit-bearing tree. The original form may have been … — [de Vaan, s.v. viscum, p. 697]

2. viscum — Lewis & Short

viscum, i, n. (m. collat. form viscus, i, i)co/s, vicos; Lat. viscus],

Plaut. Bacch. 1, 1, 16) [cf. Gr.

I the mistletoe.

I Lit., Plin. 16, 44, 94, § 248; 24, 4, 6, § 11; Verg. A. 6, 205.—

II Transf., birdlime made from the berries of the mistletoe, Cic. N. D. 2, 57, 144; Verg. G. 1, 139; Val. Fl. 6, 263; Mart. Spect. 11, 2.—

B Trop.: viscus merus vestra est blanditia, Plaut. Bacch. 1, 1, 16: tactus sum vehementer visco: cor stimulo foditur, i. e. with love, id. ib. 5, 2, 39.

3. viscum — Walde–Hofmann

viscum, -: n. (viscus, -1 m. Plaut. Bach. 50) „die Mistel; der aus ihren Beeren bereitete Vogelleim* (seit Plaut. und Cato, rom. z.T. gelehrt, spätl. viscus Adj., s. Svennung Unt. 267), viscarius, -a, -um, davon viscarium, -? n. Aug. (serpentis est fémina, inde diabolus aucupätur’, eiscátus, -a, -um (Lucil, usw., vgl. Fortüna viscáta = Toyn "|Eeurnpia Plut., davon visco, -áre seit Theod. Prisc., Orib.); viscidus, … — [Walde–Hofmann, s.v. viscum, p. 1709]

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. viscum (scan p. 697; entry #2003).
Walde-Hofmann, Lateinisches etymologisches Worterbuch Treated in Walde-Hofmann, Lateinisches etymologisches Worterbuch s.v. viscum (scan p. 1709; entry #3278).

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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.