digitus

Borrowed from Latin digitus. Doublet of digit.

digitus (plural digiti)

1. (historical) An Ancient Roman unit of length, approximately 0.73 inches.

• dictus

Traditionally derived from Proto-Italic *digitos, from Proto-Indo-European *deyǵ- (“to show, point out, pronounce solemnly”), variant of the root *deyḱ- that also gave Latin dīcō (“I say, speak talk”) and English toe (though De Vaan is skeptical due to the presumed phonetic processes resulting in the change of a ḱ- to a ǵ- having no other examples in Latin).^[1] Fingers were thus "pointers, indicators". The "digit" sense comes from the fact that they were used for counting up to ten.

Indo-European cognates include Sanskrit दिशति (diśáti, “to show, point out”), Ancient Greek δείκνυμι (deíknumi, “to show”), δίκη (díkē, “manner, custom”), Old English tǣċan (“to show, point out”) (English teach) and tācen (English token). The relation to Ancient Greek δᾰ́κτῠλος (dắktŭlos, “finger”) is unclear, particularly as the latter term's phonetics suggest a substrate origin.

Compare similar semantic shift in English in the cognate word teacher (“forefinger, index finger”).

• (Classical Latin) IPA^(key): [ˈdɪ.ɡɪ.tʊs]
• (modern Italianate Ecclesiastical) IPA^(key): [ˈd̪iː.d͡ʒi.t̪us]

digitus m (genitive digitī); second declension

1. a finger, toe
2. (mathematics) a digit
3. an inch (in ancient times, a 16th part of a Roman foot)
4. a twig

Second-declension noun.

• Note: the genitive plural digitum is attested in Vitruvius and in a fragment of Varro (quoted by the grammarian Charisius).

• “digitus”, in Charlton T. Lewis and Charles Short (1879) A Latin Dictionary, Oxford: Clarendon Press
• “digitus”, in Charlton T. Lewis (1891) An Elementary Latin Dictionary, New York: Harper & Brothers
• "digitus", 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)
• digitus in Gaffiot, Félix (1934) Dictionnaire illustré latin-français, Hachette.
• Carl Meißner, Henry William Auden (1894) Latin Phrase-Book‎^[1], London: Macmillan and Co.
  • to touch with the fingertips: extremis digitis aliquid attingere
    
• “digitus”, in Harry Thurston Peck, editor (1898), Harper’s Dictionary of Classical Antiquities, New York: Harper & Brothers
• “digitus”, in William Smith et al., editor (1890), A Dictionary of Greek and Roman Antiquities, London: William Wayte. G. E. Marindin

digitus

1. alternative form of digit