by Lucia Horatia Adamas » Mon Dec 11, 2017 10:02 am
L. Horatia Adamas L. Livio Senecæ omnibusque fautoribus linguæ Latinæ S.P.D.
Ut videtur, munus verborum hebdomadalium praebendorum ad me transiit. However, there is a very apt Latin word which comes to mind at this time of year: bruma, -æ, f., meaning 'winter solstice,' the shortest day of the year, or the period near the time of the winter solstice, that is, midwinter. By extension, this word comes to mean winter in general, or cold, wintry weather, and is also used in expressing someone's age, as in 'Marcus is six winters old.' (There are, however, other ways of doing the latter in Latin).
Several Roman authors use this word, including classical ones; Cato writes 'ubi solstitium fuerat ad brumam,' Cicero notes 'eas [litteras] mihi post brumam reddiderunt,' Horatius has 'tepidas…præbet Juppiter brumas,' and there are a good many other citations from Cæsar, Columella, Ovid, Terence, Propertius, Lucretius, Vergil, Pliny, and several others.
By derivation, 'bruma' is a contraction of the superlative degree of the adjective 'brevis,' i.e., 'brevima,' which may have been mispronounced much as we English speakers do with the vernacular versions of 'give me' and 'forget about it,' so 'bruma' rather than 'brevima' actually is the correct form of this word. Despite a fair number of classical citations, 'bruma' is sufficiently rare in Latin textbooks that not even Latin teachers may have seen it, so Latin students might like to ask their teachers if they know what this means.
Valete!