natrī̆x

Meaning

1. water snake
   Cur deus, omnia nostra causa cum faceret (sic enim vultis), tantam vim natricum viperarumque fecerit, cur mortifera tam multa perniciosa terra marique disperserit.106 BCE – 43 BCE, Cicero, Lucullus 120.4
   Ne viperas quidem et natrices et si qua morsu aut ictu nocent effligeremus, si in reliquum mansuefacere possemus aut efficere ne nobis aliisve periculo essent; ergo ne homini quidem nocebimus quia peccavit, sed ne peccet, nec umquam ad praeteritum sed ad futurum poena referetur; non enim irascitur sed cavet.c. 4 BCE – 65 CE, Seneca Minor, Dialogi 4.31.8.2
2. Metaphor of disputed meaning; perhaps denoting either a penis or a type of whip.
   si natibus natricem inpressit crassam et capitatam2014 translation by Robert Cowan if s/he thrusts a thick natrix with a head on it into/onto my buttocks2nd century BC, Gaius Lucilius, Saturae 2.72
3. name of a plant
   Natrix vocatur herba, cuius radix evulsa virus hirci redolet.Pliny, Natural History 27.107.1

Declension

Origins

From Proto-Italic *natriks, from Proto-Indo-European *(s)nh₁-tr-ih₂-. Cognate with German Natter, English adder. According to a proposal of André Martinet, the /ks/ in the nominative singular developed from word-final *h₂s, and /ik/ subsequently spread from the nominative singular to other forms of the word by paradigmatic leveling; Schrijver 1991 rejects this hypothesis, but Rasmussen 1993 considers it plausible. A pronunciation with a long vowel in the second syllable is attested by the time of Priscian (see Pronunciation below); this may have been caused by the much greater frequency of nouns ending in -īx, -īcis compared to those ending in -ĭx, -ĭcis, and more specifically by the possibility of reinterpreting the word as a feminine agent noun derived from the verb no, nāre (“swim”) and the suffix -trīx (“-tress”).