isicium

Latin

Alternative forms

• īnsicia, īnsicium, īsicia, īssicium

Etymology

From īnsecō (“cut up”) +‎ -ius, with regular deletion of /n/ before a fricative and compensatory lengthening.

Noun

īsicium n (genitive īsiciī or īsicī); second declension

1. minced meat, forcemeat
   • 116 BCE – 27 BCE, Marcus Terentius Varro, De Lingua Latina 5.110:

     Insicia ab eo quod insecta caro, ut in Carmine Saliorum <prosicium> est, quod in extis dicitur nunc prosectum.

     • 1938 translation by Roland G. Kent

       Insicia ‘minced meat’ from this, that the meat is insecta ‘cut up,’ just as in the Song of the Salii the word prosicium ‘slice’ is used, for which, in the offering of the vitals, the word prosectum is now used.

   • Apicius Caelius, De Re Coquinaria 2.1:

     Isicia fiunt marina de cammaris et astacis de lolligine, de sepia, de locusta. Isicium condies pipere, ligustico, cumino, laseris radice.

     • 2009 translation by Jospeh Dommers Vehling

       HERE ARE MANY KINDS OF MINCED DISHES: SEAFOOD MINCES ARE MADE OF SEA-ONION, OR SEA CRAB-FISH, LOBSTER, CUTTLE-FISH, INK FISH, SPINY LOBSTER, SCALLOPS AND OYSTERS. THE FORCEMEAT IS SEASONED WITH LOVAGE, PEPPER, CUMIN AND LASER ROOT.

   1. (specifically) rissole, meatball or mincemeat patty
   2. (Medieval Latin) stuffed meat, sausage

Declension

Second-declension noun (neuter).

Case	Singular	Plural
Nominative	īsicium	īsicia
Genitive	īsiciī īsicī1	īsiciōrum
Dative	īsiciō	īsiciīs
Accusative	īsicium	īsicia
Ablative	īsiciō	īsiciīs
Vocative	īsicium	īsicia

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

Descendants

• → Ancient Greek: ἰσίκιον (isíkion) (Koine)
• Italian: ciccia

References

• “insicium” on page 1015 of the Oxford Latin Dictionary (2nd ed., 2012)
• De Vaan, Michiel (2008) “secō”, in Etymological Dictionary of Latin and the other Italic Languages (Leiden Indo-European Etymological Dictionary Series; 7), Leiden, Boston: Brill, →ISBN, page 550
• isicium 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)
• “isicium” in volume 7, part 2, column 492, line 257 in the Thesaurus Linguae Latinae (TLL Open Access), Berlin (formerly Leipzig): De Gruyter (formerly Teubner), 1900–present

Further reading

• “isicium”, in Charlton T. Lewis and Charles Short (1879) A Latin Dictionary, Oxford: Clarendon Press