murgisō
Meaning
- A crafty advocate, a shrewd shyster
Declension
| form | singular | plural |
|---|---|---|
| nominative | murgisō | murgisōnēs |
| genitive | murgisōnis | murgisōnum |
| dative | murgisōnī | murgisōnibus |
| accusative | murgisōnem | murgisōnēs |
| ablative | murgisōne | murgisōnibus |
| vocative | murgisō | murgisōnēs |
Origins
Unknown, a word with only remote attestations and deemed foreign. Compare Old Armenian մրգուզ (mrguz, “base, mean; obscure”), perhaps together with it from a Semitic term belonging to the root ر ج س (r j s) related to filth, disgrace. Formally it looks like the active participle ofform IV, *مُرْجِس (*murjis), which would signify “someone who does filthy business” or “who is filthy”, perhaps relating to affairs specific to Judaea or Syria, while the Armenian term matches the passive participle ofform I, مَرْجُوس (marjūs, “filthy”). However these measures are unusual in Northwest Semitic and the Latin term might be directly borrowed from Classical Syriac ܡܪܓܙܢܐܼ (/margəzānā/, “quarrelsome; one who provokes to anger”) from the root ܪ ܓ ܙ related to enragement, the ending of which a Latin speaker naturally identifies with ō, ōnis, the long /ɑ/ having the quality /ɔ/ in Syriac depending on the dialect, and to which the Armenian is also possibly related.