cautēs
Meaning
- a rough, craggy or pointed rock, or cliff; rock, crag
“[...] sed dūrīs genuit tē cautibus horrēns / Caucasus, Hyrcānaeque admōrunt ūbera tigrēs.” “But the hard, horrible Caucasus bore you on [its] jagged cliffs, and Hyrcanian tigresses took you to their teats.” (Dido portrays Aeneas as being hard-hearted and inhuman. Syncopation: admorunt = admoverunt.)
29 BCE – 19 BCE, Vergilius, Aeneis 4.366–367
Latīnē defined in Latin in our graded readers
saxum asperum marisChoosing the right word Döderlein's Latin Synonyms
Saxum · Rupes · Cautes · Petra · Scopuli · Lapis · Calculus · Scrupulus
1. Saxum, rupes, and cautes, are greater; lapis, calx, and scrupus, smaller masses of stone. Plin. H. N. xxxvi. 22. Silex viridis ubi invenitur, lapis, non saxum est. 2. Saxa (from ψεκάς, ψήχω) are greater masses of stone, in whatever form, like πέτραι; rupes and petræ (πέτραι, from πεσεῖν) are steep and high, like rocks, and therefore difficult to climb; cautes and scopuli are rough and pointed, like crags, and therefore threaten danger; the cautes are smaller, and also not visible in the water, and therefore deceitful; the scopuli (from κόψαι) jutting upwards, threaten and announce danger, like σκόπελοι. 3. Lapis (ἄλιψ) is the most general expression, and denotes the stone only as a material substance, without regard to its form, like λίθος; calculus, is a smooth, generally round pebble; scrupulus, a rough, generally angular pebble; but for this meaning of scrupulus, the dimin. of scrupus, we have only the authority of grammarians; in authors it has only the figurative meaning of scruple. (v. 191.)
Declension
| form | singular | plural |
|---|---|---|
| nominative | cautēs | cautēs |
| genitive | cautis | cautium |
| dative | cautī | cautibus |
| accusative | cautem | cautēs cautīs |
| ablative | caute | cautibus |
| vocative | cautēs | cautēs |
saxa et cautes timere, Caes. B. G. 3, 13: celsae, Enn. Ann. 402 Vahl. ex conj.: durae, Verg. A. 4, 366; Ov. M. 4, 672; 7, 418: praerupta, id. ib. 1, 719: solida, id. ib. 12, 124: inviae, Plin. 37, 2, 10, § 27. —As a symbol of insensibility, Ov. M. 11, 330.Charlton Lewis's shorter dictionary for students: the same scholarship in plain, modern definitions.
Origins
Likely a hypercorrection of cōtēs, the plural of cōs (“whetstone, sharpening stone”), from Proto-Indo-European *ḱeh₃- (“to sharpen”), so originally meaning “sharp points, promontories”. See plaudō~plōdō for another possible example of the same hypercorrection. Cognates include Latin catus (“clever, cunning”), cōs (“whetstone”), cuneus (“wedge”) and Ancient Greek κῶνος (kônos, “cone”). A different suggestion relates it to English heap and Tocharian B kauc (“up, high”), from an irregularly shaped root, as well as with English high, a connection rejected by modern etymologists. The three different stop consonants t~p~k under this suggestion likewise remain unexplained.