vulgus

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English

Noun

vulgus (plural vulguses)

  1. (UK, education, historical) A school exercise in which pupils are tasked with writing a short piece of Greek or Latin verse on a given subject.
    • 1857, Thomas Hughes, Tom Brown's School Days:
      So the table was cleared, the cloth restored, and the three fell to work with Gradus and dictionary upon the morning's vulgus.

Latin

Alternative forms

Etymology

May be from Proto-Italic *wolgos or *welgos, perhaps from Proto-Indo-European *welH- (to throng, crowd), whence also Welsh gwala (sufficiency, enough), Middle Breton gwalc'h (abundance), Sanskrit वर्ग (varga, group, division); see also Latin volvō (I roll, turn over) for the same or a similar root.

Some have attempted, without success, to link it to Proto-Indo-European *pl̥h₁-go-, whence English folk.

Pronunciation

Noun

vulgus n sg or m sg (genitive vulgī); second declension

  1. (uncountable) the common people
  2. (uncountable) the public
  3. throng, crowd
    Synonyms: multitūdō, turba
  4. gathering

Declension

Second declension, usually nominative/accusative/vocative in -us.

Case Singular
Nominative vulgus
Genitive vulgī
Dative vulgō
Accusative vulgus
vulgum
Ablative vulgō
Vocative vulgus
vulge

Second declension neuter, nominative/accusative/vocative in -us. Also rarely encountered as a regular masculine second declension noun.

There is also the heteroclitic ablative singular vulgū.

Derived terms

Descendants

  • Galician: vulgo
  • Italian: volgo
  • Portuguese: vulgo
  • Romanian: vulg
  • Sicilian: vulgu
  • Spanish: vulgo

References

  • vulgus”, in Charlton T. Lewis and Charles Short (1879) A Latin Dictionary, Oxford: Clarendon Press
  • vulgus in Charles du Fresne du Cange’s Glossarium Mediæ et Infimæ Latinitatis (augmented edition with additions by D. P. Carpenterius, Adelungius and others, edited by Léopold Favre, 1883–1887)
  • vulgus in Gaffiot, Félix (1934) Dictionnaire illustré latin-français, Hachette.
  • Carl Meißner, Henry William Auden (1894) Latin Phrase-Book, London: Macmillan and Co.
    • to divulge, make public: efferre or edere aliquid in vulgus
    • to be a subject for gossip: in ora vulgi abire
    • a demagogue, agitator: plebis dux, vulgi turbator, civis turbulentus, civis rerum novarum cupidus