lucus a non lucendo
Lucus a non lucendo Reference library
Brewer's Dictionary of Phrase & Fable (19 ed.)
... a non lucendo An etymological contradiction. The Latin phrase was formerly used by philologists who explained words by deriving them from their opposites. It means literally ‘a grove (so called) from not producing light’, from lucus , ‘grove’ and lucere , ‘to shine’, ‘to be light’. It was the Roman grammarian Honoratus Maurus ( fl. late 4th century ad ) who provided this famous etymology. In the same way ludus , ‘school’, where pupils work, may be said to come from ludere , ‘to play’, and English ‘linen’ from ‘lining’, because it is not used for...
lucus a non lucendo Quick reference
The Oxford Dictionary of Phrase and Fable (2 ed.)
... a non lucendo a paradoxical or otherwise absurd derivation; something of which the qualities are the opposite of what its name suggests. Recorded in English from the early 18th century, this Latin phrase means ‘a grove (so called) from the absence of lux (light)’; that is, a grove is named from the fact of its not shining, a proposition discussed by the Roman rhetorician Quintilian ( ad c. 35– c. 96 ) in his Institutio Oratoria...
lucus a non lucendo noun phrase Reference library
The Oxford Essential Dictionary of Foreign Terms in English
... a non lucendo noun phrase E18 Latin (literally, ‘a grove from its not shining’, i.e., lucus (a grove) is derived from lucere (to shine) because there is no light there). A paradoxical or otherwise absurd derivation; something of which the qualities are the opposite of what its name suggests. Also abbreviated lucus a non . The phrase is discussed by the Roman rhetorician Quintilian in his Institutio Oratoria ...
lucus a non lucendo
Snowe, Lucy Reference library
The Oxford Companion to the Brontes
...This pattern of cool observation and control yielding to warmth and expression recurs. Yet expression is also constantly frustrated, either by Lucy's exertion of reason, or by overmastering circumstances. In a letter to W. S. Williams of 6 November 1852 Charlotte wrote: ‘A cold name [Lucy Snowe] must have; partly, perhaps, on the lucus a non lucendo principle—partly on that of the “fitness of things,” for she has about her an external coldness’ (Smith Letters , 3. 80). Thus Lucy acquiesces in her limited life with Miss Marchmont : ‘I would have...
linguistics, historical and comparative (Indo-European) Reference library
Oswald John Louis Szmerenyi and Anna Morpurgo Davies
The Oxford Classical Dictionary (4 ed.)
...Should we compare Skt. yūs ‘broth’ with Lat. iūs ‘law’? The answer is negative since the correct comparison is with the homonymous Latin iūs ‘broth’, but decisions are not always easy. We do not any longer accept the old etymologies of the type lucus a non lucendo ‘a wood is called lucus because there is no light ( lux )’ ( see etymology ), but we acknowledge that it is difficult to formulate general laws of semantic development. Nevertheless comparative studies have cleared up many problems which would have remained insoluble within Latin or...
WORD Reference library
Marc Baratin, Barbara Cassin, Irène Rosier-Catach, Frédérique Ildefonse, Jean Lallot, and Jacqueline Léon
Dictionary of Untranslatables: A Philosophical Lexicon
...site and example of the principle of a fit between designation and signification, insofar as the signification reduplicated the designation, and motivated it by giving it a meaning. Moreover, the contradictory meaning of “to say mu ,” both an inarticulate sound and an articulate statement, can be compared to the etymology by antiphrasis, or opposition, that the ancients were fond of: so, for example, lucus (wood) was said to be derived from lucendo (light), because there is no light in a wood ( lucus a non lucendo [a clearing because one cannot see...
Grecian n. Reference library
Green's Dictionary of Slang
... 11: The yokels all are floor'd with fright, / So full of yawns and gazes; That up to town to see the sight, / They're pouring in like blazes: / To put these Grecians on their pins, / That they may come to time, sir. 1977 Maledicta 1:2 134: An obsolete example of the lucus-a-non-lucendo use of words is grecian for an Irish immigrant, and hence for any uncouth newcomer; perhaps Irish migrants were sarcastically called grecians because they lacked any of those cultured qualities that set the true Athenian apart from the Boeotians [i.e. stupid...
shaver n. 1 Reference library
Green's Dictionary of Slang
...is a boy, a lad, one just beginning to shave; or else, on the lucus a non lucendo principle, one who does not shave, but would if he could! […] The term is often humorously applied here, as in England, to boys who ape the behavior of men. 1850 F.E. Smedley Frank Fairlegh ( 1878 ) 161: Ever read fairy tales, Fairlegh? I did when I was a little shaver. 1856 C. Reade It Is Never Too Late to Mend II 252: Here you young shaver bring the candle out here. 1863 C. Reade Hard Cash III 77: Come, be quick young shaver. 1869 J. Greenwood Seven...
