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pistillum. In DICTIOUS you will not only get to know all the dictionary meanings for the word
pistillum, but we will also tell you about its etymology, its characteristics and you will know how to say
pistillum in singular and plural. Everything you need to know about the word
pistillum you have here. The definition of the word
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English
Etymology
From Latin pistillum. Doublet of pestle and pistil.
Noun
pistillum (plural pistilla)
- (botany, obsolete) A pistil.
Latin
Etymology
A diminutive formation from the root of pīnsō and pistō. Perhaps from *pistlelo-,[1] diminutive of *pistlo- (the ancestor of pīlum (“pounder, pestle”)), from *pis- and the instrument noun suffix *tlo-. Alternatively from *pistrelo-,[2] with the -tr- variant of the instrument noun suffix. On the one hand, the base *pistrum is not attested, and the phonetically regular outcome of *pistrelo- would probably be pistellum rather than pistillum. On the other hand, reconstructing a *-s-tl- sequence in the base at the time the diminutive was derived is chronologically problematic since *-tl- was changed to *-kl-* from early on in Italic (as seen in the Latin instrument suffix -culum).
Pronunciation
Noun
pistillum n (genitive pistillī); second declension
- A pestle.
Declension
Second-declension noun (neuter).
Descendants
References
- ^ De Vaan, Michiel (2008) “bīlis”, in Etymological Dictionary of Latin and the other Italic Languages (Leiden Indo-European Etymological Dictionary Series; 7), Leiden, Boston: Brill, →ISBN, pages 467 and 72
- ^ Miller, D. Gary (2006) Latin Suffixal Derivatives in English: and their Indo-European Ancestry, New York: Oxford University Press, →ISBN, page 91
Further reading
- “pistillum”, in Charlton T. Lewis and Charles Short (1879) A Latin Dictionary, Oxford: Clarendon Press
- pistillum in Gaffiot, Félix (1934) Dictionnaire illustré latin-français, Hachette.
- “pistillum”, in William Smith et al., editor (1890), A Dictionary of Greek and Roman Antiquities, London: William Wayte. G. E. Marindin