festuca

From Latin festūca.

• IPA^(key): /fesˈtu.ka/, [fes̪ˈt̪uːkä]
• Rhymes: -uka
• Stress: festùca
• Hyphenation: fe‧stu‧ca

festuca f (plural festuche)

1. straw
   • 1321, Dante Alighieri, La divina commedia: Inferno [The Divine Comedy: Hell] (paperback), 12th edition, Le Monnier, published 1994, Canto XXXIV, lines 10–12, page 506:

     Già era, e con paura il metto in metro, ¶ là dove l'ombre tutte eran coperte, ¶ e trasparien come festuca in vetro.

     Now was I, and with fear in verse I put it, there where the shades were wholly covered up, and glimmered through like unto straws in glass.

• festuca in Treccani.it – Vocabolario Treccani on line, Istituto dell'Enciclopedia Italiana

• fistūca (“ram, piledriver”), historically sometimes considered a separate word

Perhaps connected to ferula, with a common earlier stem *fes-. De Vaan notes if suffixation is with +‎ -ūcus as in several plant names: sambūcus (“elderberry”), albūcus (“asphodel; asphodel bulb”), lactūca (“lettuce”), the stem could be *festo. Gaffiot numbers the sense of ram, piledriver, usually spelt fistūca, a separate word, but it is offered as an alternate spelling in De Vaan.

• (Classical) IPA^(key): /fesˈtuː.ka/, [fɛsˈtuː.ka]
• (Ecclesiastical) IPA^(key): /fesˈtu.ka/, [fesˈtuː.ka]
• (Vulgar) IPA^(key): /fesˈtuː.ka/, [fesˈtu.ɡa]

festūca f (genitive festūcae); first declension

1. straw
2. stalk, stem
3. rod used to touch slaves in ceremonial manumission
4. ram, piledriver (often spelt fistūca in this sense)

First declension.

• French: fétu

• festuca in Charlton T. Lewis and Charles Short (1879) A Latin Dictionary, Oxford: Clarendon Press
• festuca in Charles du Fresne du Cange’s Glossarium Mediæ et Infimæ Latinitatis (augmented edition, 1883–1887)
• festuca in Gaffiot, Félix (1934) Dictionnaire Illustré Latin-Français, Hachette
• festuca in Harry Thurston Peck, editor (1898) Harper's Dictionary of Classical Antiquities, New York: Harper & Brothers
• festuca in William Smith et al., editor (1890) A Dictionary of Greek and Roman Antiquities, London: William Wayte. G. E. Marindin