pistillum

English

Etymology

From Latin pistillum. Doublet of pestle and pistil.

Noun

pistillum (plural pistilla)

1. (botany, obsolete) A pistil.

Latin

Etymology

A diminutive formation from the root of pīnsō and pistō. Perhaps from *pistlelo-, diminutive of *pistlo- (the ancestor of pīlum (“pounder, pestle”)), from *pis- and the instrument noun suffix *tlo-. Alternatively from *pistrelo-, with the -tr- variant of the instrument noun suffix. On the one hand, the base *pistrum is not attested, and the phonetically regular outcome of *pistrelo- would probably be pistellum rather than pistillum. On the other hand, reconstructing a *-s-tl- sequence in the base at the time the diminutive was derived is chronologically problematic since *-tl- was changed to *-kl-* from early on in Italic (as seen in the Latin instrument suffix -culum).

Pronunciation

• (Classical Latin) IPA^(key): /pisˈtil.lum/, [pɪs̠ˈt̪ɪlːʲʊ̃ˑ]
• (modern Italianate Ecclesiastical) IPA^(key): /pisˈtil.lum/, [pisˈt̪ilːum]

Noun

pistillum n (genitive pistillī); second declension

1. A pestle.

Declension

Second-declension noun (neuter).

	singular	plural
nominative	pistillum	pistilla
genitive	pistillī	pistillōrum
dative	pistillō	pistillīs
accusative	pistillum	pistilla
ablative	pistillō	pistillīs
vocative	pistillum	pistilla

Descendants

• Italian: pestello
• Old French: pestel
  • → Middle English: pestel, pestell, pistel, pestelle, pestylle, pestill, pestyl
    • English: pestle
  • Middle French: pestel
• Old Occitan: pestel
• → English: pistillum
• → French: pistil
  • → English: pistil
  • → Romanian: pistil
• → Spanish: pistilo

Further reading

• “pistillum”, in Charlton T. Lewis and Charles Short (1879) A Latin Dictionary, Oxford: Clarendon Press
• pistillum in Gaffiot, Félix (1934) Dictionnaire illustré latin-français, Hachette.
• “pistillum”, in William Smith et al., editor (1890), A Dictionary of Greek and Roman Antiquities, London: William Wayte. G. E. Marindin