sorbus

English

Etymology

From the genus name.

Noun

sorbus (plural sorbuses)

1. (botany) Any plant of the genus Sorbus.

Esperanto

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key):
• Rhymes: -orbus
• Hyphenation: sor‧bus

Verb

sorbus

1. conditional of sorbi

Latin

Etymology

Unknown. IEW links Russian соробали́на (sorobalína), сорбали́на (sorbalína, “rose hip, blackberry”) and Lithuanian serbentà, serbeñtas (“redcurrant, blackcurrant”) and others (also comparing the verb sir̃bti, sir̃pti (“to ripen”)), reconstructing Proto-Indo-European *ser-, *ser-bʰ- (“red, reddish-brown”). De Vaan maintains that this connection is possible, but adds that the meaning of the root would not be “red”. Instead, these words may be derived from a common non-Indo-European substrate source *sVrb- (“berry”). Probably unrelated to sorbeō (“I drink, suck up, slurp”).

Noun

sorbus f (genitive sorbī); second declension

1. sorb; service tree; Sorbus domestica

Declension

Second-declension noun.

Derived terms

• sorbum

Descendants

• → Translingual: Sorbus
• Italian: sorbo (“tree of the genus Sorbus”)
• Romanian: sorb (“wild service tree”)
• Spanish: suerbo
• Vulgar Latin: *sorbea, *sorba
  • → Albanian: shurbë
  • Old English: syrfe
    • Middle English: serve, serves pl
      • English: service
        • ⇒ service tree, serviceberry
  • Old French: *sorba
    • Middle French: sorbe
      • → English: sorb
        • ⇒ sorb apple
      • French: sorbe
  • Galician: sorba
  • → Greek: σουρβιά (sourviá)
    • → Albanian: survë
  • Italian: sorba (“rowan”)
    • ⇒ sorbola (“sorb apple, sorb”)
  • Old Occitan: sorba
  • Portuguese: sorva (“rowan; cow tree”)
  • Spanish: serba
  • ⇒ Vulgar Latin: *sorbāria (“tree of the genus Sorbus: service tree, rowan, whitebeam, mountain ash”)
    • Middle French: sorbier
      • French: sorbier
    • Galician: sorbeira (“sorb; wild service tree; rowan; gooseberry”)
    • Portuguese: sorveira (“rowan”)

References

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