carbasus

• Heteroclite neuter plural: carbasa

Borrowed from Ancient Greek κάρπασος (kárpasos, “cotton”), from Biblical Hebrew כַּרְפַּס (karpás, “fabric of cotton”), from Sanskrit कर्पास (karpāsa, “cotton”), though Mediterranean and Anatolic sources have also been suggested. The same Sanskrit word has resulted in gossypium (“cotton”).

carbasus f (genitive carbasī); second declension

1. linen, cambric, canvas
   • 29 BCE – 19 BCE, Virgil, Aeneid 4.417–418:

     “[...] vocat iam carbasus aurās, / puppibus et laetī nautae imposuēre corōnās.”

     “[...] already their canvas invites the winds, and the merry sailors have strung garlands on their ships.”
     (A poetic singular “carbasus” represents the fabric of all Trojan sails ready to leave Carthage.)

2. sail, awning, curtain

Second-declension noun.

• carbaseus

• Fraenkel, Siegmund (1886) Die aramäischen Fremdwörter im Arabischen (in German), Leiden: E. J. Brill, page 145
• Löw, Immanuel (1924) Die Flora der Juden‎^[1] (in German), volume 2, Wien und Leipzig: R. Löwit, page 236
• Parthey, Gustav (1844) Vocabularium coptico-latinum et latino-copticum e Peyroni et Tattami lexicis (in Latin), Berlin: Fr. Nicolai, page 563
• “carbasus”, in Charlton T. Lewis and Charles Short (1879) A Latin Dictionary, Oxford: Clarendon Press
• “carbasus”, in Charlton T. Lewis (1891) An Elementary Latin Dictionary, New York: Harper & Brothers
• carbasus 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)
• carbasus in Gaffiot, Félix (1934) Dictionnaire illustré latin-français, Hachette.
• “carbasus”, in Harry Thurston Peck, editor (1898), Harper's Dictionary of Classical Antiquities, New York: Harper & Brothers
• “carbasus”, in William Smith et al., editor (1890), A Dictionary of Greek and Roman Antiquities, London: William Wayte. G. E. Marindin