caudex

 

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caudex

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From Latin caudex (“tree trunk”, “tree stem”); compare codex.^[1]

• (Received Pronunciation) enPR: kôʹdĕks, IPA^(key): /ˈkɔːdɛks/,^[1]

caudex (plural caudices or caudexes)^[1]

1. (botany)^[1] An enlargement of the stem, branch or root of a woody plant, usually serving to store water.

• caudicle
• codex

• cōdex

Uncertain. Most likely to be connected to cūdō (“I beat, strike”), both deriving from the same dental extension of Proto-Indo-European *kewh₂-, *keh₂w- (“to beat, hew, chop”),^[1] and so originally meant “that which has been cleaved off”. See also cauda (“tail”). Another possibility is a relation to caulis (“stalk”), if this is an l-stem derivative of the same ultimate root, perhaps *ḱawh₁- (“to swell; hollow”) (whence cavus) if both words originally meant “hollow stem”.

An older idea connected it to Latin caupulus (“a kind of small boat”), based on the observation that similar words meaning “boat” and “tree” are often related in Indo-European languages, as many Indo-European peoples used hollowed out trees as boats and skiffs.^[2]

• (Classical Latin) IPA^(key): /ˈkau̯.deks/, [ˈkäu̯d̪ɛks̠]
• (modern Italianate Ecclesiastical) IPA^(key): /ˈkau̯.deks/, [ˈkäːu̯d̪eks]

caudex m (genitive caudicis); third declension

1. tree trunk, stump
2. bollard; post
3. book, writing; notebook, account book
4. (derogatory) blockhead, idiot

   Synonyms: see Thesaurus:homo stultus

Third-declension noun.

• (bollard, blockhead, idiot): gurdus

• caudica (“a raft”)
• caudicālis
• caudicārius
• caudiceus

See also cōdex.

• → Catalan: càudex
• → Portuguese: cáudice

• “caudex”, in Charlton T. Lewis and Charles Short (1879) A Latin Dictionary, Oxford: Clarendon Press
• “caudex”, in Charlton T. Lewis (1891) An Elementary Latin Dictionary, New York: Harper & Brothers
• caudex in Charles du Fresne du Cange’s Glossarium Mediæ et Infimæ Latinitatis (augmented edition with additions by D. P. Carpenterius, Adelungius and others, edited by Léopold Favre, 1883–1887)
• caudex in Gaffiot, Félix (1934) Dictionnaire illustré latin-français, Hachette.
• “caudex”, in Harry Thurston Peck, editor (1898), Harper's Dictionary of Classical Antiquities, New York: Harper & Brothers