sagitta

Borrowing from Latin sagitta (“an arrow, shaft, bolt”).

• IPA^(key): /səˈd͡ʒɪt.ə/

• Audio (US):

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• Rhymes: -ɪtə

sagitta (plural sagittas or (arrowworm) sagittae)

1. The keystone of an arch.
2. (geometry) The distance from a point in a curve to the chord; also, the versed sine of an arc; so called from its resemblance to an arrow resting on the bow and string.
3. (zootomy) The larger of the two otoliths, or earbones, found in most fishes.
4. Any arrowworm, of the genus Sagitta.

• sagittal

• “sagitta”, in Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary, Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster, 1996–present.

Unknown etymology. Probably from a pre-Latin Mediterranean language.^[1]

A minority view connects it to sāgiō (“to perceive quickly or keenly”).

• (Classical Latin) IPA^(key): [saˈɡɪt.ta]
• (modern Italianate Ecclesiastical) IPA^(key): [saˈd͡ʒit̪.t̪a]

sagitta f (genitive sagittae); first declension

1. an arrow, shaft, bolt
   • 29 BCE – 19 BCE, Virgil, Aeneid 1.187–188:

     Cōnstitit hīc, arcumque manū celerīsque sagittās
     corripuit, fīdus quae tēla gerēbat Achātēs.

     [Aeneas] halted here, and grasped in hand his bow and swift arrows, weapons which were being carried by the faithful Achates.
     (See: Aeneas; Achates (Aeneid).)

2. (metonymic)
   1. (botany) the extreme thin part of a vine branch or shoot
   2. the arrowhead (plant of the genus Sagittaria)
   3. (Late Latin, medicine) a lancet (instrument for bloodletting)

First-declension noun.

• arcus m

• “sagitta”, in Charlton T. Lewis and Charles Short (1879) A Latin Dictionary, Oxford: Clarendon Press
• “sagitta”, in Charlton T. Lewis (1891) An Elementary Latin Dictionary, New York: Harper & Brothers
• "sagitta", 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)
• sagitta in Gaffiot, Félix (1934) Dictionnaire illustré latin-français, Hachette.
• “sagitta”, in Harry Thurston Peck, editor (1898), Harper’s Dictionary of Classical Antiquities, New York: Harper & Brothers
• “sagitta”, in William Smith et al., editor (1890), A Dictionary of Greek and Roman Antiquities, London: William Wayte. G. E. Marindin