ranunculus

Borrowed from translingual Ranunculus, from Latin rānunculus.

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ranunculus (plural ranunculuses or ranunculi)

1. Any plant of the genus Ranunculus; the buttercup or crowfoot.

• (genus Ranunculus): buttercup, crowfoot

• ranunculaceous

From Latin rānunculus.

• IPA^(key): /ˈrɑnuŋkulus/, [ˈrɑ̝nuŋˌkulus̠]
• Rhymes: -ulus

ranunculus (rare)

1. (botany) ranunculus (plant of the genus Ranunculus)

• leinikki

From rāna (“frog”) +‎ -unculus (diminutive suffix). An irregularly formed diminutive in several ways: the ending -unculus was rarely used as a suffix, more often appearing when the diminutive suffix -culus is added to a stem ending in /n/, and the gender of a Latin diminutive usually is the same as that of the base word, but in this case changes from feminine to masculine. See also rānula, another diminutive from rāna.

Compare typologically Ancient Greek βατράχιον (batrákhion) (diminutive of βάτραχος (bátrakhos)).

• (Classical Latin) IPA^(key): [raːˈnʊŋ.kʊ.ɫʊs]
• (modern Italianate Ecclesiastical) IPA^(key): [raˈnuŋ.ku.lus]

rānunculus m (genitive rānunculī); second declension

1. a little frog, polliwog, tadpole
2. buttercup, crowfoot (Ranunculus)

Second-declension noun.

• rāna
• rānula

Borrowings:

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