acetum

Learned borrowing from Latin acētum.

acetum (plural acetums or aceta)

1. (obsolete) Vinegar, sometimes medicated.

• cumate, macute, mucate

• 🜊 (alchemy)

From aceō (“to be sour”).^[1]

• (Classical Latin) IPA^(key): [aˈkeː.tũː]
• (modern Italianate Ecclesiastical) IPA^(key): [aˈt͡ʃɛː.t̪um]

acētum n (genitive acētī); second declension

1. vinegar
   • c. 69 CE – 122 CE, Suetonius, De vita Caesarum 4 37:

     Nepōtātus sūmptibus omnium prōdigōrum ingenia superāvit, commentus novum balneārum ūsum, portentōsissima genera cibōrum atque cēnārum, ut calidīs frīgidīsque unguentīs lavārētur, prētiōsissima margarīta acētō liquefacta sorbēret, convīvīs ex aurō pānēs et obsōnia appōneret, aut frūgī hominem esse oportere dictitāns aut Caesarem.

     • 1889 translation by Alexander Thomson

       In the devices of his profuse expenditure, he surpassed all the prodigals that ever lived; inventing a new kind of bath, with strange dishes and suppers, washing in precious unguents, both warm and cold, drinking pearls of immense value dissolved in vinegar, and serving up for his guests loaves and other victuals modelled in gold; often saying, " that a man ought either to be a good economist or an emperor."

2. (figuratively) wit, shrewdness

Second-declension noun (neuter).

• “acetum”, in Charlton T. Lewis and Charles Short (1879) A Latin Dictionary, Oxford: Clarendon Press
• “acetum”, in Charlton T. Lewis (1891) An Elementary Latin Dictionary, New York: Harper & Brothers
• "acetum", in Charles du Fresne du Cange’s Glossarium Mediæ et Infimæ Latinitatis (augmented edition with additions by D. P. Carpenterius, Adelungius and others, edited by Léopold Favre, 1883–1887)
• acetum in Gaffiot, Félix (1934) Dictionnaire illustré latin-français, Hachette.
• “acetum”, in Harry Thurston Peck, editor (1898), Harper’s Dictionary of Classical Antiquities, New York: Harper & Brothers