balneum

• balineum
• balneus, baneum, balnea (nonstandard)

From Ancient Greek βαλανεῖον (balaneîon), apparently borrowed early enough for unstressed reduction of the second /a/ to /ĭ/ and then syncope.

• (Classical Latin) IPA^(key): [ˈbaɫ.ne.ũː]
• (modern Italianate Ecclesiastical) IPA^(key): [ˈbal.ne.um]

balneum n (genitive balneī); variously declined, second declension, first declension

1. bath, bathing place, bathroom
   • (Can we date this quote?), Another Letter from Young M. Aurelius to Fronto, quoted in 1879 by Cruttwell and Banton (editors) in Specimens of Roman Literature: Passages Illustrative of Roman Thought and Style, section 188, page 599:

     […] discus crepuit, id est pater meus in balneum transisse nuntiatus est.

     The gong rang, it is announced that my father is going to the bath.

The inflection of this noun was irregular. Usually, the plural became feminine and first declension with the specific meaning of a public place for bathing (e.g. public baths):

Second-declension noun (neuter) or first-declension noun.

Since the Augustan period the following regular declension was sometimes used:

Second-declension noun (neuter).

Occasionally, backed-formed balnea was used as a singular.

• balneārius
• balneō

Reflexes of the variant baneum/balneum:

• “balneum”, in Charlton T. Lewis and Charles Short (1879) A Latin Dictionary, Oxford: Clarendon Press
• “balneum”, in Charlton T. Lewis (1891) An Elementary Latin Dictionary, New York: Harper & Brothers
• "balneum", 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)
• balneum in Gaffiot, Félix (1934) Dictionnaire illustré latin-français, Hachette.
• “balneum”, in Samuel Ball Platner (1929) Thomas Ashby, editor, A Topographical Dictionary of Ancient Rome, London: Oxford University Press