prōmunturium

Meaning

1. peak, ridge, highest part of a mountain chain.
2. cape, headland, promontory, ness
   inde legit Capreas promunturiumque Minervae / et Surrentino generosos palmite collesTranslation by Frank Justus Miller Thence he skirted Capreae, Minerva's promontory, and the hills of Surrentum rich in vines8 CE, Ovidius, Metamorphoses 15.709

Latīnē defined in Latin in our graded readers

Declension

Phrases from Meissner's Latin Phrase-Book

promunturium superare

to double a cape.

promunturium in mare procurrit

a promontory juts out into the sea.

superare insulam, promunturium

to double an island, cape.

Origins

Unclear. The first element can be identified as the prefix prō-. Although the end of the word resembles the suffix -tōrium, the spelling with -torium seems to postdate that with -turium, and the word scans in Ovid Metamorphoses 15.709 as prōmuntŭrĭumque (per Müller, who rejects the alternative of reading this line with synizesis as prōmuntūr.jumque). The second element is typically considered to be mōns, montis (“mountain”). The /u/ could have developed by vowel reduction (which was a regular sound change in non-initial syllables); alternatively, the variation between /o/ and /u/ in this word could be akin to that seen in some other words before a nasal in a closed syllable (even a word-initial syllable) such as frōns/frūns. Lewis and Short (1879) and Gaffiot (1934) favor a derivation from prōmineō (“project, jut out”) (ultimately derived, like mōns, from Proto-Indo-European *men-); however, Ernout and Meillet (1985) consider this difficult. De Vaan, noting that -tōrium is typically affixed to verb bases, proposes an alternative etymology from prōmoneō (“warn”) via contraction of *prōmonetōriom, with the idea that a word meaning "warner" might be used to refer to a "'signpost' in the landscape".

In English words that came into English from prōmunturium

• promontoriumpromontorium