cucumis

See also: Cucumis

Latin

Etymology 1

A wanderwort[1] likely ultimately from Sumerian 𒄾 (ukuš2, “cucumber”) or an unidentified pre-Indo-European Mediterranean substrate language; see Arabic قِثَّاء (qiṯṯāʔ, “snake melon”), as well as Ancient Greek σῐκῠ́ᾱ (sĭkŭ́ā, “bottle gourd”). Compare especially Ancient Greek κύκυον (kúkuon), κυκύϊζα (kukúïza, “a type of sweet round gourd”).

Pronunciation

Noun

cucumis m (genitive cucumeris or cucumis); third declension

  1. cucumber, melon: any variety of the species Cucumis melo (true melons)
    2. Cucumis melo var. flexuosus: most preferred type in Roman Italy, today known as the Armenian cucumber, snake melon or vegetable melon
    3. any other variety of Cucumis melo
  2. Citrullus lanatus: watermelon
  3. (Medieval Latin, New Latin) Cucumis sativus: garden cucumber
  4. (New Latin) the genus Cucumis
Usage notes
  • Cucumerēs (cucumbers) reaching a certain large size, so that the rind could be applied over a child's head, were called pepones (pumpkins).
  • The species Cucumis sativus was unknown to the Romans.
Declension

Third-declension noun (imparisyllabic non-i-stem or i-stem, accusative singular in -im, ablative singular in -ī; two different stems).

singular plural
nominative cucumis cucumerēs
cucumēs
genitive cucumeris
cucumis 		cucumerum
cucumium
dative cucumerī
cucumī 		cucumeribus
cucumibus
accusative cucumerem
cucumim 		cucumerēs
cucumēs
cucumīs
ablative cucumere
cucumī 		cucumeribus
cucumibus
vocative cucumis cucumerēs
cucumēs
Derived terms
Descendants

Etymology 2

See the etymology of the corresponding lemma form.

Pronunciation

Noun

cucumīs

  1. dative/ablative plural of cucuma (“kettle”)

References

  1. ^ De Vaan, Michiel (2008) “cucumis, -eris”, in Etymological Dictionary of Latin and the other Italic Languages (Leiden Indo-European Etymological Dictionary Series; 7), Leiden, Boston: Brill, →ISBN, page 148

Further reading

  • “cucumis”, in Charlton T. Lewis and Charles Short (1879) A Latin Dictionary, Oxford: Clarendon Press
  • “cucumis”, in Charlton T. Lewis (1891) An Elementary Latin Dictionary, New York: Harper & Brothers
  • cucumis in Gaffiot, Félix (1934) Dictionnaire illustré latin-français, Hachette.
  • “ukuš”, in The Pennsylvania Sumerian Dictionary‎[1], University of Pennsylvania, 2006
  • Janick, Jules, Paris, Harry S., Parrish, David C. (2007) “The Cucurbits of Mediterranean Antiquity: Identification of Taxa from Ancient Images and Descriptions”, in Annals of Botany‎[2], volume 100, number 7, →DOI, pages 1441–1457
This article is issued from Wiktionary. The text is available under Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 unless otherwise noted. Additional terms may apply for the media files.