zodiacus

Borrowed from Ancient Greek ζῳδῐᾰκός (zōidĭăkós) κύκλος (kúklos, “little animal cycle”).

• (Classical Latin) IPA^(key): [zoːˈdi.a.kʊs]
• (modern Italianate Ecclesiastical) IPA^(key): [d̪͡z̪oˈd̪iː.a.kus]

zōdiacus (feminine zōdiaca, neuter zōdiacum); first/second-declension adjective

1. of or pertaining to the zodiac

First/second-declension adjective.

zōdiacus m (genitive zōdiacī); second declension

1. the zodiac
   • 1581, Christophori Clavii Bamburgensis ex Societate Iesu in Sphaeram Ioanis de Sacro Bosco Commentarius, page 59:

     Diuturna observatione deprehenderunt astronomi, caelos inferiores non moveri ab occasu in ortum super polos mundi, et per circulum aequinoctialem, sed super polos distinctos, nempe super zodiaci, et per circulum zodiacum.

     By long observation, astronomers have discovered that the lower heavens do not move from west into the east upon the world's poles and through the circle of the equinox, but upon different poles, specifically the poles of the zodiac, and through the zodiac circle.

Second-declension noun.

• Old French: zodiaque
  • French: zodiaque
  • Norman: zodiaque
  • → Middle English: zodiak
    • English: zodiac
  • → Classical Gaelic: stoidiace
    • Irish: stoidiaca

• “zodiacus”, in Charlton T. Lewis and Charles Short (1879) A Latin Dictionary, Oxford: Clarendon Press
• “zodiacus”, in Charlton T. Lewis (1891) An Elementary Latin Dictionary, New York: Harper & Brothers
• zodiacus in Gaffiot, Félix (1934) Dictionnaire illustré latin-français, Hachette.
• “zodiacus”, in Harry Thurston Peck, editor (1898), Harper’s Dictionary of Classical Antiquities, New York: Harper & Brothers