Disputatio:Ficus tinctoria

de genere adiectivi[fontem recensere]

No agreement of noun and adjective: example of how botanical Latin doesn't make sense sometimes--24.183.186.151 23:17, 24 Octobris 2009 (UTC)[reply]

E.g.? IacobusAmor 23:28, 24 Octobris 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Legi "Ficus tinctoria" sed putavi nomen "ficus tinctorius" rectum. Nunc autem legi apud Lewis et Short: " The declension and gender were disputed even among the ancients". fi!--24.183.186.151 23:33, 24 Octobris 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Yeah, my dictionary says masculine, too, but the evidence is pretty strong for preferring feminine:

Varr. L. L. 9, § 80: Item negant esse analogias, quod alii dicunt cupressus, alii cupressi, item de ficis platanis et plerisque arboribus, de quibus alii extremum US, alii EI faciunt. Id est falsum: nam debent dici E et I, fici ut nummi, quod est ut nummis ficis, ut nummorum ficorum. Si essent plures ficus, essent ut manus; diceremus ut manibus, sic ficibus, et ut manuum, sic ficuum, neque has ficos diceremus, sed ficus, ut non manos appellamus, sed manus, nec consuetudo diceret singularis obliquos casus huius fici neque hac fico, ut non dicit huius mani, sed huius manus, nec hac mano, sed hac manu.

Mart. 1, 65, 4: "cum dixi ficus, rides quasi barbara verba, Et dici ficos, Caeciliane, jubes. Dicemus ficus, quas scimus in arbore nasci: Dicemus ficos, Caeciliane, tuas."

Plin. 16, 31, 55: "fici, quarum radices longissimae"

Quint. 6, 3, 88: "sub una ficu"

Oddly the ficus sycamorus seems to be the only species with a Latinate botnanical name in masculine... --Ioscius ^(disp) 23:46, 24 Octobris 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Even that's OK, because Sycomorus there is a noun, not an adjective; we know this because it's capitalized in Hortus Third, which maintains the old & correct tradition of capitalizing the species epithet when it's a noun and lowercasing it when it's an adjective. ¶ I suppose with ficus, the thinking was that it's a tree, and the default for trees is feminine, so it must be feminine. IacobusAmor 23:52, 24 Octobris 2009 (UTC)[reply]

The entry in Oxford Latin Dictionary ed. P. G. W. Glare (Oxonii: Clarendon Press, 1968–1982) gives "ficus" as f. (m.), whatever that means. Yes, the default for trees is feminine. Curously, in modern French there's been a switch: the default for trees is masculine, for fruits feminine. Andrew Dalby (disputatio) 13:23, 25 Octobris 2009 (UTC)[reply]