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caelebs. In DICTIOUS you will not only get to know all the dictionary meanings for the word
caelebs, but we will also tell you about its etymology, its characteristics and you will know how to say
caelebs in singular and plural. Everything you need to know about the word
caelebs you have here. The definition of the word
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Latin
Alternative forms
Etymology
Unknown. Suggestions include Proto-Indo-European *kéywelos (“alone”), but root obscure and suffix unexplained, see also Sanskrit केवल (kévala, “alone”); possibly a suffixation of Proto-Indo-European *koyl- *keh₂i-lo- (“safe, unharmed, whole”), via unattested *cael.
Pronunciation
Adjective
caelebs (genitive caelibis); third-declension one-termination adjective
- unmarried, single
- Synonym: vacuus
- Horatius, epistulae, liber I. In: Horace Satires, Epistles and Ars poetica with an English translation by H. Rushton Fairclough, 1942, p. 258 f.:
Nil ait esse prius, melius nil caelibe vita.
Si non est, iurat bene solis esse maritis.- "Nothing," he says, "is finer or better than a single life." If it is not, he swears that only the married are well off.
Declension
Third-declension one-termination adjective (non-i-stem).
Because of the word's meaning and the fact that neuter nouns are typically inanimate, neuter uses of the adjective are expected to be rare or absent (although metonymic use, as in Horace's caelibe vita, would be theoretically possible). No neuter nominative/accusative/vocative plural form is attested in the corpus of Classical Latin texts. Some New Latin grammars give the form as *caeliba, which is consistent with the consonant-stem inflection in the rest of the paradigm: note however that only a few positive adjectives have attested consonant-stem neuter plural forms in -a.
Derived terms
Descendants
References
- ^ De Vaan, Michiel (2008) “caelebs”, in Etymological Dictionary of Latin and the other Italic Languages (Leiden Indo-European Etymological Dictionary Series; 7), Leiden, Boston: Brill, →ISBN, page 80
- ^ Richard Lloyd (1653) The Latine grammar. Or, A guide teaching a compendious way to attaine exact skill in the Latine tongue for a proper congruity and elegant variety of phrases in prose and verse. Published for the common good in continuation of a former guide, teaching to read English rightly, and write accordingly., page 54: “All Adjectives or Substantives neuter increasing short, and monosyllable Substantives that end in us encreasing long, make the Nominative plurall in a. and the Genitive plurall in um as caeliba caelibum”
Further reading
- “caelebs”, in Charlton T. Lewis and Charles Short (1879) A Latin Dictionary, Oxford: Clarendon Press
- “caelebs”, in Charlton T. Lewis (1891) An Elementary Latin Dictionary, New York: Harper & Brothers
- caelebs in Gaffiot, Félix (1934) Dictionnaire illustré latin-français, Hachette.