cunabulum

From cūn(ā) (“cradle”) +‎ -bulum (nominal suffix denoting vessel or place).

• (Classical Latin) IPA^(key): /kuːˈnaː.bu.lum/,
• (modern Italianate Ecclesiastical) IPA^(key): /kuˈna.bu.lum/,

cūnābulum n (genitive cūnābulī); second declension

1. (especially in the plural) cradle
   • 44 BCE, Cicero, De Divinatione, book 1, XXXVI, 79:

     Qui cum esset in cunabulis educareturque in Solonio, qui est campus agri Lanuvini; noctu lumine apposito, experrecta nutrix animadvertit puerum dormientem circumplicatum serpentis amplexu.

     Who, when he was in his cradle (being brought up in Solonium, which is a district of the territories of Lanuvium)---a light being located nearby, his nurse woke up and saw the sleeping boy entwined in the coils of a snake.

2. (metonymically) nest of living things
   • 29 BCE, Virgil, Georgics, book 4, line 66:

     Ipsae consident medicatis sedibus, ipsae/ Intima more suo sese in cunabula condent.

     Of themselves will they settle on the scented resting-places; of themselves, after their wont, will hide far within their cradling cells.

   • 77–79, Pliny the Elder, Natural History, book 10, chapter 33, section 51:

     Nec vero iis minor solertia, quae cunabula in terra faciunt, corporis gravitate prohibitae sublime petere.

     (please add an English translation of this quotation)

3. (metonymically) earliest abode, primary dwelling-place
   • aft. 23 BCE, Propertius, Elegies, book 3, elegy 1, line 27:

     Idaeum Simoenta Jovis cunabula parvi?

     (please add an English translation of this quotation)

   • bef. 19 BCE, Virgil, Aeneid, book 3, line 105:

     Creta Jovis magni medio jacet insula ponto,/ Mons Idaeus ubi, et gentis cunabula nostrae.

     (please add an English translation of this quotation)

4. (metonymically) birth, origin
   • 44 BCE, Cicero, De Lege Agraria, chapter 36, section 100:

     Nam cum omnium consulum gravis in republica custodienda cura ac diligentia debet esse, tum eorum maxime, qui non in cunabulis, sed in campo sunt consules facti. (not by their descent)

     (please add an English translation of this quotation)

   • flor. 42, Columella, Res rustica, book 1, chapter 3:

     quod facit, qui nequam vicinum suis numis parat, cum a primis cunabulis, si modo liberis parentibus est oriundus, audisse potuerit, [...]. (from earliest childhood)

     (please add an English translation of this quotation)

   • flor. 163, Apuleius, Metamorphoses, or The Golden Ass, book 2, section 31:

     Dies a primis cunabulis huius urbis conditus crastinus advenit, quo die soli mortalium sanctissimum deum Risum hilaro atque gaudiali ritu propitiamus.

     (please add an English translation of this quotation)

This word is only attested in the plural (with singular meaning—a plurale tantum) until the Late Latin period.

Second-declension noun (neuter).

• incūnābula

• “cūnābŭla”, in Charlton T. Lewis and Charles Short (1879) A Latin Dictionary, Oxford: Clarendon Press
• cūnābŭla in Gaffiot, Félix (1934) Dictionnaire illustré latin-français, Hachette.