bucca

• IPA^(key): /ˈbʌk.ə/
• Rhymes: -ʌkə

Borrowed from Cornish bocka. Doublet of pooka and puck.

bucca (plural buccas)

1. (UK, Cornwall) A storm spirit in Cornish folklore, traditionally believed to inhabit mines and coastal communities.
   • 2008, Oliver Berry, Belinda Dixon, Devon, Cornwall & Southwest England, page 273:

     a fabled menagerie of fairies, buccas, sprites and giants

Learned borrowing from Latin bucca (“the cheek”).

bucca (plural buccae)

1. (anatomy) Synonym of cheek.

• “bucca”, in Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary, Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster, 1996–present.

bucca (plural buccas)

1. mouth

• buca

Uncertain. Celtic origin is suspected due to similarity with beccus (“beak”), names like Gaulish Buccus, Buccō, Bucciō as well as the appearance of words bocca and boca (of unknown meaning) on the Larzac tablet. IEW compares it with Proto-Germanic *pukkô (“bag, pouch”), from Proto-Indo-European *bew, *bʰew- (“to swell, puff”), whose initial b- would point to a substrate or imitative origin. Compare also English puke, German fauchen.

• (Classical Latin) IPA^(key): [ˈbʊk.ka]
• (modern Italianate Ecclesiastical) IPA^(key): [ˈbuk.ka]

bucca f (genitive buccae); first declension

1. (anatomy):
   1. the soft part of the cheek puffed or filled out in speaking or eating
   2. (in the plural) the jaw
   3. (colloquial) the mouth

      Synonym: ōs

      • Lucius Pomponius Bononiensis, Comedies 150:

        sī valēbit, puls in buccam bētet

        if he's well, the porridge will find a way into his mouth

2. (metonymic):
   1. one who fills his cheeks in speaking; declaimer, bawler
   2. one who stuffs out his cheeks in eating; parasite
   3. a mouthful
3. (transferred sense) any cavity in general
4. (hapax legomenon) A catchword of uncertain meaning used in a guessing game, possibly equivalent and/or related to English buck buck.
   • c. 27 CE – 66 CE, Petronius, Satyricon 64.12:

     bucca, bucca, quot sunt hīc?

     (please add an English translation of this quotation)

Found in the sense of 'mouth' beginning from Pomponius and Varro (early 1st century BCE), as well as with Cicero in the colloquial expression in buccam venīre (“to come to mind first”), foreshadowing the eventual replacement of ōs by this term.

First-declension noun.

• ōs

• “bucca” on page 266 of the Oxford Latin Dictionary (2nd ed., 2012)
• De Vaan, Michiel (2008) “bucca”, in Etymological Dictionary of Latin and the other Italic Languages (Leiden Indo-European Etymological Dictionary Series; 7), Leiden, Boston: Brill, →ISBN, page 76
• Pokorny, Julius (1959) “b(e)u-2, bh(e)ū̆-”, in Indogermanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch [Indo-European Etymological Dictionary] (in German), volume 1, Bern, München: Francke Verlag, pages 98-102

• “bucca”, in Charlton T. Lewis and Charles Short (1879) A Latin Dictionary, Oxford: Clarendon Press
• “bucca”, in Charlton T. Lewis (1891) An Elementary Latin Dictionary, New York: Harper & Brothers
• "bucca", 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)
• bucca in Gaffiot, Félix (1934) Dictionnaire illustré latin-français, Hachette.

From Proto-West Germanic *bukkō, from Proto-Germanic *bukkô (“male goat”), from Proto-Indo-European *bʰugo- (“buck”). Akin to Old High German boc, Old Norse bukkr, Middle Dutch boc, Avestan 𐬠𐬏𐬰𐬀 (būza, “buck, goat”), Old Armenian բուծ (buc, “lamb”), Old English bucc (“male deer”).

• IPA^(key): /ˈbuk.kɑ/

bucca m (nominative plural buccan)

1. he-goat
   • c. 994, Ælfric, On the Year

     Ǣlċe mōnað hēo yrnð under ān þǣra tacna. Ān þǣra tacna ys ġehāten aries, þæt is ramm; oðer taurus, þæt is fearr; ðridda gemini, þæt synd ġetwisan; fēorða cancer, þæt is crabba; fīfta leo; syxta virgo, þæt is mǣden; seofoða libra, þæt is pund orde wǣġe; eahtoðe scorpius, þæt is þrōwend; nigoða is sagittarius, þæt is sċytta; teoða ys capricornus, þæt is buccan horn, oððe bucca; endlyfta is aquarius, þæt is wæter-ġyte, oððe þe þe wæter ġyt; twelfte is pisces, þæt synd fixas.

     Each month runs under one of the signs [of the Zodiac]. The first of the signs is called aries, that is "ram"; the second is taurus, that is "bull"; the third is gemini, that is "twins"; the fourth is cancer, that is "crab"; the fifth is lion; the sixth is virgo, that is "virgin"; the seventh is libra, that is "pound" or "scales”; eighth is scorpious, that is "scorpion"; ninth is sagittarius, that is "shooter"; tenth is capricornus, that is "he-goat's horn" or "he-goat"; eleventh is aquarius, that is "pouring water" or "one that pours water"; twelfth is pisces, that is "fishes."

Weak:

• bucc
• byċċen

• Middle English: bukke, bocke, boke, buc, bucce, bucke, buk
  • English: buck
  • Scots: buk, buke, buik
  • Yola: buch

• vucca, ucca

From Latin bucca.

• IPA^(key): /ˈbu(ː)kka/, /vu(ː)-/

• Audio (Eastern Sicilian; /vuː-/):

  (file)

• Hyphenation: bùc‧ca

bucca f (plural bucchi)

1. mouth