lausa¹

Meaning

1. Proto Gallo Romancefemininereconstructionflagstone

Declension

Origins

Uncertain; possibly borrowed from Gaulish *lausā, from Proto-Celtic *lausā (“stone”), perhaps from Proto-Indo-European *léh₁u-s ~ *l̥h₁w-és, whence also Proto-Celtic *līwos (“stone”), from *leh₁- (“stone”), though this is problematic for both Celtic and the other cognates. Surfaces again in Medieval Latin as lausa, but much later.

Meaning

1. Medieval Latinfeminineflagstone, slab
   Item quod habitatores possint ... capere lausam, arenam et petram de dicto loco aut suis pertinentiis et ressorto ad aedificandum et construendum dum tamen satisfia[n]t domino possessionis de qua dictae lapides, lausae et arenae capiuntur.1328 (March), letters patent ratified by Philippe VI, quoted in 1985, Odon de Lingua de Saint-Blanquat, La fondation des bastides royales dans la sénéchausée de Toulouse aux XIIIe et XIVe siècles
   , medieval Galician text, quoted in 1995, Francisco Rodríguez Iglesias, María del Mar Pérez Negreira, Galicia: Historia : Galicia en la época medieval, page 380

Declension

Origins

Uncertain. The term is thought to have existed as Vulgar Latin *lausa (whence Old French lose, Old Occitan lausa), possibly ultimately borrowed from Gaulish *lausā, from Proto-Celtic *lausā (“stone”), from Proto-Indo-European *léh₁u-s ~ *l̥h₁w-és, whence also Proto-Celtic *līwos (“stone”), from *leh₁- (“stone”). However, as early as the second century BCE, Plautus' Truculentus uses a word which the manuscript tradition gives as lausum, the meaning of which has been debated and which has been often corrected to lassus or pausam, and since Schöll (1887) to lausam in the meaning known from Romance. (Alternatively, one can posit the transmitted manuscript form lausum as a neuter lemma form, from the plural of which (lausa) the feminine Romance forms derive.) : * c. 189 BCE, Plautus, Truculentus 730–731: Stultus es, qui facta infecta facere verbis postules: Thetis quoque etiam lamentando lausum fecit filio. A sot you are, who strives to make with words the done undone, Thetis yet had to set the grave slab on the mourned gone son. The term lausa is unambiguously attested in Medieval Latin, but by that time is thought to be a reborrowing from Old Occitan lausa.