cuscolium

Latin

Etymology

Bertoldi compares Calabrian coscu, cuoscu (“young oak”), Sicilian cosca (“cabbage stalk”), cismontan Corsican cuscogliulu (“scrap or shell of a chestnut”), Gallurese cuscugia (“dry branches”), Logudorese cuscudza (“grain sweepings on the threshing-floor, kindling for a fire”), and Berber aqešquš (“small twigs kept for sparking off fire”), and Basque kozkil (“left-over chestnut twigs or shells”), koskor (“small person”), kuzkur (“acorn”), kuskul (“bent of age”), koskor (“plant leftovers”), koska (“sottishness”), and therefore Latin quisquilia (“mixed-in twigs or stalks; odds and ends”), leaving open possible Aquitanian or Berber connections. In other words, probably loaned of a substrate term.

Pronunciation

• (Classical Latin) IPA^(key): /kusˈko.li.um/, [kʊs̠ˈkɔlʲiʊ̃ˑ]
• (modern Italianate Ecclesiastical) IPA^(key): /kusˈko.li.um/, [kusˈkɔːlium]

Noun

cuscolium n (genitive cuscoliī or cuscolī); second declension

1. the scarlet berry of the holm oak

Declension

Second-declension noun (neuter).

	singular	plural
nominative	cuscolium	cuscolia
genitive	cuscoliī cuscolī1	cuscoliōrum
dative	cuscoliō	cuscoliīs
accusative	cuscolium	cuscolia
ablative	cuscoliō	cuscoliīs
vocative	cuscolium	cuscolia

¹Found in older Latin (until the Augustan Age).

Descendants

• Aragonese: coscullo (“stalk of a fruit”), coscurro (“bread crust”)
• Catalan: coscoll (“kermes oak; Molopospermum peloponnesiacum; holly”)
  • → French: couscouil
• Spanish: coscojo (“kermes oak; beech”)
• Occitan: couscouio, couscolho (“dry legume”)
• → Basque: couscourro (“pine needle”)

References

• “cuscolium”, in Charlton T. Lewis and Charles Short (1879) A Latin Dictionary, Oxford: Clarendon Press
• cuscolium in Gaffiot, Félix (1934) Dictionnaire illustré latin-français, Hachette.
• Bertoldi, Vittorio (1948) “Quisquiliae Ibericae”, in Romance Philology‎^[1] (in Italian), volume 1, number 3, pages 204–207