aesculus

Etymology unclear. By surface analysis, seemingly a diminutive form ending in -ulus (diminutive suffix).

Perhaps from Proto-Indo-European *h₂eyǵ- (“oak”), or from a Mediterranean substrate, though the presence of a Germanic cognate is surprising. Compare English oak, Lithuanian ąžuolas (“oak”), Albanian enjë (“juniper, yew”), Ancient Greek αἰγίλωψ (aigílōps, “Turkey oak”).

• (Classical Latin) IPA^(key): [ˈae̯s.kʊ.ɫʊs]
• (modern Italianate Ecclesiastical) IPA^(key): [ˈɛs.ku.lus]

aesculus f (genitive aesculī); second declension

1. the tallest species of oak, the winter oak or Italian oak (with edible acorns), sacred to Jupiter
   • [1st century BCE], Varro, De lingua latina (tr. R. G. Kent, Loeb Classical Library, 1938), pages 142-143

     ut inter Sacram Viam et Macellum editum Corneta ⟨a cornis⟩, quae abscisae loco reliquerunt nomen, ut Aesculetum ab aesculo dictum

     ...just as between the Sacred Way and I he higher part of the Macellum are the Corneta 'Cornel-Cherry Groves,' from corni 'cornel-cherry trees,' which though cut away left their name to the place; just as the Aesculetum 'Oak-Grove' is named from aesculus 'oak-tree'...

   • [8 CE] Ovid, Metamorphoses (tr. Brookes More, Cornhill Publishing, 1922). Lines I.448-451

     Hic iuvenum quicumque manu pedibusve rotave

     vicerat, aesculeae capiebat frondis honorem:

     nondum laurus erat, longoque decentia crine

     tempora cingebat de qualibet arbore Phoebus.

     In these the happy youth

     who proved victorious in the chariot race,

     running and boxing, with an honoured crown

     of oak leaves was enwreathed. The laurel then

     was not created, wherefore Phoebus, bright

     and godlike, beauteous with his flowing hair,

     was wont to wreathe his brows with various leaves.

Second-declension noun.

• aesculeus

• Italian: eschio
• → Portuguese: ésculo

• De Vaan, Michiel (2008) “aesculus”, in Etymological Dictionary of Latin and the other Italic Languages (Leiden Indo-European Etymological Dictionary Series; 7), Leiden, Boston: Brill, →ISBN, page 28
• “aesculus”, in Charlton T. Lewis and Charles Short (1879) A Latin Dictionary, Oxford: Clarendon Press
• “aesculus”, in Charlton T. Lewis (1891) An Elementary Latin Dictionary, New York: Harper & Brothers
• "aesculus", 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)
• aesculus in Gaffiot, Félix (1934) Dictionnaire illustré latin-français, Hachette.
• “aesculus”, in Harry Thurston Peck, editor (1898), Harper’s Dictionary of Classical Antiquities, New York: Harper & Brothers