arbutus

See also: Arbutus

English
fruit of the strawberry tree (Arbutus)
trailing arbutus (Epigaea repens)

Etymology

From translingual Arbutus, from Latin arbutus.

Noun

arbutus (plural arbutuses or arbuti)

  1. Any flowering plant in the genus Arbutus: the strawberry tree.
    • 1826, [Mary Shelley], chapter X, in The Last Man. […], volume III, London: Henry Colburn, […], →OCLC:
      Many nights, though autumnal mists were spread around, I passed under an ilex - many times I have supped on arbutus berries and chestnuts, making a fire, gypsy-like, on the ground […]
  2. Epigaea repens, the mayflower, the trailing arbutus.
    • 1859, Ferna Vale, Natalie; or, A Gem Among the Sea-Weeds:
      Ah, who is he,—on whom young men and maidens look with pitying eye? to whom the old man lifts his hat, and little children cease from their sports as he passes, and quietly slip the innocent daisy, or the sweet-scented arbutus into his hand, which they have culled from the wide commons, where, they have been told, the good Sea-flower loved to stray.
  3. Arbute; the wood of the strawberry tree.

Translations
strawberry tree — see strawberry tree

References

Anagrams

Latin

Etymology

Unknown. Lewis and Short (1879) suggests it is related to arbor (“tree”) (compare arbustus (“planted with trees, wooded”)), but Ernout and Meillet (1985) recognizes no etymology,[1] and Schrijver (1991) says it lacks a reliable etymology.[2]

Pronunciation

Noun

arbutus f (genitive arbutī); second declension

  1. strawberry tree (Arbutus unedo)
    Synonym: unedō

Declension

Second-declension noun.

Case Singular Plural
Nominative arbutus arbutī
Genitive arbutī arbutōrum
Dative arbutō arbutīs
Accusative arbutum arbutōs
Ablative arbutō arbutīs
Vocative arbute arbutī

Derived terms

Descendants
  • Galician: érbedo, albedro
  • Occitan: arboça, arboç
  • Old Spanish: alborco
  • Portuguese: êrvedo

References
  1. Ernout, Alfred, Meillet, Antoine (1985) “arbutus”, in Dictionnaire étymologique de la langue latine: histoire des mots‎ (in French), 4th edition, with additions and corrections of Jacques André, Paris: Klincksieck, published 2001, page 43
  2. Schrijver, Peter C. H. (1991) The reflexes of the Proto-Indo-European laryngeals in Latin (Leiden studies in Indo-European; 2), Amsterdam, Atlanta: Rodopi, →ISBN, page 33

Further reading
  • “arbutus”, in Charlton T. Lewis and Charles Short (1879) A Latin Dictionary, Oxford: Clarendon Press
  • “arbutus”, in Charlton T. Lewis (1891) An Elementary Latin Dictionary, New York: Harper & Brothers
  • arbutus in Gaffiot, Félix (1934) Dictionnaire illustré latin-français, Hachette.
  • “arbutus”, in Harry Thurston Peck, editor (1898), Harper's Dictionary of Classical Antiquities, New York: Harper & Brothers
  • Genaust, Helmut (1996) “Árbutus”, in Etymologisches Wörterbuch der botanischen Pflanzennamen (in German), 3rd edition, Basel: Birkhäuser Verlag, →ISBN, page 73a
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