tirocinium

English

Alternative forms

• tyrocinium

Etymology

From Latin tirocinium (“first military campaign; raw recruit; inexperience; first attempt”), from tīro (“beginner, recruit, novice”) + -cinor (“forming verbs: to be a ...”) + -ium (“forming nouns: the state of ...”), used in the title of William Cowper's 1784 poem on schools Tirocinium, or A Review of Schools. Doublet of tyrociny.

Noun

tirocinium

1. Schooling, apprenticeship; novitiate.

Translations

schooling, apprenticeship

• Portuguese: tirocínio (pt) m
• Russian: обуче́ние (ru) n (obučénije), учени́чество (ru) n (učeníčestvo)

Latin

FWOTD – 20 July 2024

Alternative forms

• tyrocinium

Etymology

From tīrō (“recruit, beginner, novice”) +‎ -cinor (“to be a...”, suffix forming verbs) +‎ -ium (suffix forming abstract nouns).

Pronunciation

• (Classical Latin) IPA^(key): /tiː.roːˈki.ni.um/, [t̪iːroːˈkɪniʊ̃ˑ]
• (modern Italianate Ecclesiastical) IPA^(key): /ti.roˈt͡ʃi.ni.um/, [t̪iroˈt͡ʃiːnium]

Noun

tīrōcinium n (genitive tīrōciniī or tīrōcinī); second declension

1. apprenticeship, tyrociny
2. first military service, first campaign, recruitment
3. (by extension) military inexperience
4. (metonymically) new recruits, raw forces (collectively)
5. (figuratively) first attempt (at anything)

Declension

Second-declension noun (neuter).

	singular	plural
nominative	tīrōcinium	tīrōcinia
genitive	tīrōciniī tīrōcinī1	tīrōciniōrum
dative	tīrōciniō	tīrōciniīs
accusative	tīrōcinium	tīrōcinia
ablative	tīrōciniō	tīrōciniīs
vocative	tīrōcinium	tīrōcinia

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

Derived terms

• tīrōcinium monasticum (“novitiate, noviciate”) (Ecclesiastical)

Descendants

• → Catalan: tirocini (learned)
• → English: tirocinium (learned)

References

• “tirocinium”, in Charlton T. Lewis and Charles Short (1879) A Latin Dictionary, Oxford: Clarendon Press
• "tirocinium", 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)
• tirocinium in Gaffiot, Félix (1934) Dictionnaire illustré latin-français, Hachette.