hircus

• ircus

Unknown. As with other Indo-European words for “goat”, a reliable Proto-Indo-European etymon cannot be formally reconstructed. Nonetheless, compare Old High German irah, irh (“buck”), which Pokorny says is borrowed from the Latin. Possibly related to hirpus (“wolf”) and/or hirtus (“hairy, shaggy”); according to Pokorny, all three are from Proto-Indo-European *ǵʰers- (“to bristle”).^[1]

Varro, in De Lingua Latina cites a Sabine form: fircus.

• (Classical Latin) IPA^(key): [ˈhɪr.kʊs]
• (modern Italianate Ecclesiastical) IPA^(key): [ˈir.kus]

hircus m (genitive hircī); second declension

1. a buck, male goat
2. (by extension) the rank smell of the armpits

   Sī cuī iūre bonō sacer ālārum obstitit hircus,...

   If ever a good fellow was justly affected with the vile stench of the armpits,...

3. (figuratively) a filthy person

Second-declension noun.

• (male goat): caper

• buccus
• caper
• capra
• haedus

• hircīnus
• Hircipēs
• hircōsus
• hirculus

• ⇒? Italian: lercio, ricchione
• Borrowings:
  • → Catalan: erc
  • ⇒ English: hircine, hircinous, hircose
  • → Galician: hirco
  • → Italian: irco
  • → Sicilian: ircu
  • → Spanish: hirco

• “hircus”, in Charlton T. Lewis and Charles Short (1879) A Latin Dictionary, Oxford: Clarendon Press
• “hircus”, in Charlton T. Lewis (1891) An Elementary Latin Dictionary, New York: Harper & Brothers
• "hircus", 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)
• hircus in Gaffiot, Félix (1934) Dictionnaire illustré latin-français, Hachette.
• De Vaan, Michiel (2008) Etymological Dictionary of Latin and the other Italic Languages (Leiden Indo-European Etymological Dictionary Series; 7), Leiden, Boston: Brill, →ISBN, page 286