rūmusculus
Meaning
- idle gossip
Tum etiam illi quinque qui, imperitorum hominum rumusculos aucupati, tum illum absolverunt, iam suam clementiam laudari magno opere nolebant.
66 BCE, Cicero, Pro Cluentio 38.105Quid vero historiae de nobis ad annos DC praedicabunt? quas quidem ego multo magis vereor quam eorum hominum qui hodie vivunt rumusculos.
59 BCE, Cicero, Epistulae ad Atticum 2.5
Declension
| form | singular | plural |
|---|---|---|
| nominative | rūmusculus | rūmusculī |
| genitive | rūmusculī | rūmusculōrum |
| dative | rūmusculō | rūmusculīs |
| accusative | rūmusculum | rūmusculōs |
| ablative | rūmusculō | rūmusculīs |
| vocative | rūmuscule | rūmusculī |
qui imperitorum hominum rumusculos aucupati, Cic. Clu. 38, 105: L. Cassio omnes rumusculos populari ratione aucupante, id. Leg. 3, 16, 35.Charlton Lewis's shorter dictionary for students: the same scholarship in plain, modern definitions.
Origins
From rūmor (“gossip; rumor”) + -culus (diminutive-forming suffix). (Like other abstract nouns ending in the suffix -or m, the word rūmor originally had a nominative form ending in *-ōs and an oblique stem ending in *-os-: the form rūmusculus would be regular if built on the original oblique stem. Alternatively, the ending -usculus may have been taken by analogy from older diminutives such as arbuscula (“a small tree”) (from arbor), meliusculus (“a little better”) (from melior, melius, meliōr-), or other diminutives of comparative words. The earliest attested use of rūmusculus is in Cicero, who probably used the innovative nominative form rūmor, and certainly used the innovative oblique stem rūmōr-.)