anguimanus

Compound of anguis (“serpent, snake”) +‎ manus (“hand”).

• (Classical Latin) IPA^(key): [aŋˈɡʷɪ.ma.nʊs]
• (modern Italianate Ecclesiastical) IPA^(key): [aŋˈɡʷiː.ma.nus]

anguimanus

1. serpent-handed (used by Lucretius as a poetic epithet of the elephant)
   • c. 99 BCE – 55 BCE, Lucretius, De rerum natura 2.536:

     […] sicut quadripedum cum primis esse videmus
     in genere anguimanūs elephantōs, India quōrum
     milibus e multis vallo munitur eburno,
     ut penitus nequeat penetrari: […]

     • 1924 translation by W. H. D. Rouse, revised by Martin F. Smith

       as in the race of quadrupeds we see especially snake-handed elephants, which in their many thousands provide an ivory palisade about India, so that none may penetrate within

   • c. 99 BCE – 55 BCE, Lucretius, De rerum natura 5.1302:

     Inde boves Lucas turrito corpore, tetras,
     anguimanūs, bellī docuērunt volnera Poenī
     sufferre et magnas Martis turbare catervas.

     • 1924 translation by W. H. D. Rouse, revised by Martin F. Smith

       Next the Lucanian oxen with turreted backs, hideous creatures, snake-handed, were taught by the Carthaginians to endure the wounds of war, and to confound the great hosts of Mars.

• In Classical Latin, this adjective is attested only by two examples of the fourth-declension accusative plural (once as masculine, once as feminine), found in the quotations from Lucretius cited above. In some New Latin dictionaries and authors, the word is instead found as a first/second-declension adjective.

Fourth declension adjective.

First/second-declension adjective.

• “anguĭmănus”, in Charlton T. Lewis and Charles Short (1879) A Latin Dictionary, Oxford: Clarendon Press
• anguĭmănŭs in Gaffiot, Félix (1934) Dictionnaire illustré latin-français, Hachette.
• anguimanus in Georges, Karl Ernst, Georges, Heinrich (1913–1918) Ausführliches lateinisch-deutsches Handwörterbuch, 8th edition, volume 1, Hahnsche Buchhandlung