mentula

See also: Mentula

English

Alternative forms

Etymology

From Latin mentula.

Noun

mentula (plural mentulas or mentulae or mentulæ)

  1. A penis.
    • 1974, Guy Davenport, Tatlin!:
      He, watchman of gardens, keeps evil away with his mentula up, warding off blight and thieves, garlanded with figs and grapes.

Anagrams

Latin

Etymology

Disputed.

  • Some derive it from Proto-Indo-European *men- (“to protrude, to project, to stick out”), making it cognate with emineō (“to project”) and mōns (“mountain”). Possibly from Italic-Celtic *mn̥tolā, if cognate to Irish méadal (“paunch, fat belly”), where "the original meaning of the Irish and Latin words seems to have been 'projecting part of the body'".[1]
  • Others favor a connection to mens f (“mind”), from Proto-Indo-European *men- (“to think”).[2]
  • The form is equivalent to menta (“mint stalk”) +‎ -ula (diminutive suffix) and Cicero uses "mentam pusillam" to obliquely refer to this word when discussing the topic of obscenity. It has been suggested this is its etymology, but Adams 1990 regards this as unlikely.[2]

Pronunciation

Noun

mentula f (genitive mentulae); first declension

  1. (vulgar) dick, cock (obscene word for the penis)
    Synonyms: pēnis, veretrum, (vulgar) mūtō
    Hyponym: (vulgar) verpa
    • c. 84 BCE – 54 BCE, Catullus, Carmina 29:
      Ut ista vestra diffututa mentula
      ducenties comesset aut trecenties?
      Would the hundredth time be enough for your cock to have had enough, nay, even the three-hundredth?
    • 86 CE – 103 CE, Martial, Epigrammata IX.33:
      Maronis illic esse mentulam scito.
      Know that Maro's cock is found there.

Declension

First-declension noun.

singular plural
nominative mentula mentulae
genitive mentulae mentulārum
dative mentulae mentulīs
accusative mentulam mentulās
ablative mentulā mentulīs
vocative mentula mentulae

Derived terms

Descendants

  • ⇒ Vulgar Latin: *mintula (see there for further descendants)
  • → English: mentula
  • → French: mentule

References

  1. ^ Ó Briain, Micheál: (1923) 'Hibernica', Zeitschrift für die Celtische Philologie (14), 318-319. https://codecs.vanhamel.nl/Zeitschrift_f%C3%BCr_celtische_Philologie_14_(1923).
  2. ↑ 2.0 2.1 Adams, J.N. (1990), The Latin Sexual Vocabulary, JHU Press, →ISBN, page 10

Further reading

  • “mentula”, in Charlton T. Lewis and Charles Short (1879), A Latin Dictionary, Oxford: Clarendon Press
  • “mentula”, in Charlton T. Lewis (1891), An Elementary Latin Dictionary, New York: Harper & Brothers
  • “mentula”, in Gaffiot, Félix (1934), Dictionnaire illustré latin-français, Hachette.
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