favus

Borrowed from Latin favus (“honeycomb”).

• IPA^(key): /ˈfeɪvəs/

• Audio (Southern England):

  (file)

• Rhymes: -eɪvəs

favus (countable and uncountable, plural favi)

1. (medicine) A severe, chronic infection of ringworm.

   Synonyms: honeycomb ringworm, honeycomb scall, honeycomb tetter

   • 1901 July 19, “Favus in Poultry”, in The Agricultural Journal and Mining Record‎^[1], volume 4, number 10, page 317:

     The first signs of an attack of favus are small, pale, irregular, cup-like spots on the comb or wattles, generally appearing on the comb first.

2. A tile or flagstone cut into a hexagonal shape to produce a honeycomb pattern.

• favose

• “favus”, in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, Springfield, Mass.: G. & C. Merriam, 1913, →OCLC.

Borrowed from Latin favus (“honeycomb”).

• IPA^(key): /fa.vys/

favus m (uncountable)

1. favus

• “favus”, in Trésor de la langue française informatisé [Digitized Treasury of the French Language], 2012.

From Proto-Indo-European *bʰōw- (“to swell, grow, thrive, be, live, dwell”). Related to English build.

• (Classical Latin) IPA^(key): [ˈfa.wʊs]
• (modern Italianate Ecclesiastical) IPA^(key): [ˈfaː.vus]

favus m (genitive favī); second declension

1. honeycomb
   • 4th-century CE, Jerome of Stridon (St. Jerome), Vulgate, 24:13:

     comede fīlī mī mel quia bonum est et favum dulcissimum gutturī tuō

     Eat honey, my son, because it is good, and the honeycomb most sweet to thy throat.

     (trans. Douay-Rheims Bible)

   • 8 CE, Ovid, Fasti 3.745–746:

     ut satyrī levisque senex tetigēre sapōrem,
     quaerēbant flāvōs per nemus omne favōs

     Since the satyrs and the bald-headed old man [Silenus] had tasted its flavor,
     they were searching for the golden yellow honeycombs through all the grove.
     (Note the poetic word play in the consonance and assonance of ‘‘flāvōs favōs.’’ For more honeyed mythology, see Liber, Dionysus, Silenus, and The Discovery of Honey by Bacchus.)

2. a hexagonal pavement stone

Second-declension noun.

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

Borrowed from French favus.

favus n (plural favusuri)

1. favus