[Taxacom] Tegula, tegulae, tegulum, etc.

[Richard Zander]

I've been asked by Patricia Eckel (patricia.eckel at mobot.org) to forward
her comment on the Tegula thread:

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I've looked in my Oxford classical Latin dictionary open, the old one by
Lewis and Short, not the new one by Glare. This is of interest only to
show the classical Latin platform upon which the entomologists and
others have played through the years.

Tegula (s.f.I), gen. sg. tegulae is roof-tiles, a tiled roof or tiles.
It was also used in the nominative plural: Tegulae,-arum more generally
to mean the same thing. English uses somewhat the same idiomatic sense,
as in 'bricks and mortar' (not brick and mortar).

There was also the classical neuter word:

Tegulum (s.n.II), gen. sg. teguli, nom. & acc. pl. tegula. This was a
covering, a roof, thatch.

So the feminine one emphasized the parts (a tile) making up the whole,
whereas the second one emphasized the whole (a roof). 

There are many additional words that a taxonomist could have selected
(and maybe they did somewhere in the literature), such as

Tegillum (s.n.II), gen. sg. tegilli, nom. & acc. pl. tegilla meaning 'a
small covering, a hood or cowl"

Tegimen,-inis; tegumen,-inis and tegmen,-inis, all neuters in the third
declension, also refer to "a covering, cover"  as does tegimentum,-i and
tegmentum,-i.

All these and more come from the verb tego, 3., tectus,-a,-um (part.A),
meaning 'to cover, clothe, shelter, protect'
and so on.

P. M. Eckel

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Richard H. Zander