vulgus

English

Noun

vulgus (plural vulguses)

1. (UK, education, historical) A school exercise in which pupils are tasked with writing a short piece of Greek or Latin verse on a given subject.
   • 1857, Thomas Hughes, Tom Brown's School Days:

     So the table was cleared, the cloth restored, and the three fell to work with Gradus and dictionary upon the morning's vulgus.

Latin

Alternative forms

• volgus

Etymology

May be from Proto-Italic *wolgos or *welgos, perhaps from Proto-Indo-European *welH- (“to throng, crowd”), whence also Welsh gwala (“sufficiency, enough”), Middle Breton gwalc'h (“abundance”), Sanskrit वर्ग (varga, “group, division”); see also Latin volvō (“I roll, turn over”) for the same or a similar root.

Some have attempted, without success, to link it to Proto-Indo-European *pl̥h₁-go-, whence English folk.

Pronunciation

• (Classical Latin) IPA^(key): /ˈu̯ul.ɡus/, [ˈu̯ʊɫ̪ɡʊs̠]
• (modern Italianate Ecclesiastical) IPA^(key): /ˈvul.ɡus/, [ˈvulɡus]

Noun

vulgus n sg or m sg (genitive vulgī); second declension

1. (uncountable) the common people
2. (uncountable) the public
3. throng, crowd

   Synonyms: multitūdō, turba

4. gathering

Declension

Second declension, usually nominative/accusative/vocative in -us.

	singular
nominative	vulgus
genitive	vulgī
dative	vulgō
accusative	vulgus vulgum
ablative	vulgō
vocative	vulgus vulge

Second declension neuter, nominative/accusative/vocative in -us. Also rarely encountered as a regular masculine second declension noun.

There is also the heteroclitic ablative singular vulgū.

Derived terms

• vulgāris
• vulgārius
• vulgivagus
• vulgō

Related terms

• vulgāritās
• vulgāriter
• vulgātē
• vulgātor
• vulgātus

Descendants

• Galician: vulgo
• Italian: volgo
• Portuguese: vulgo
• Romanian: vulg
• Sicilian: vulgu
• Spanish: vulgo

References

• “vulgus”, in Charlton T. Lewis and Charles Short (1879) A Latin Dictionary, Oxford: Clarendon Press
• vulgus 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)
• vulgus in Gaffiot, Félix (1934) Dictionnaire illustré latin-français, Hachette.
• Carl Meißner, Henry William Auden (1894) Latin Phrase-Book‎^[1], London: Macmillan and Co.
  • to divulge, make public: efferre or edere aliquid in vulgus
    
  • to be a subject for gossip: in ora vulgi abire
    
  • a demagogue, agitator: plebis dux, vulgi turbator, civis turbulentus, civis rerum novarum cupidus