mantele

• mantīle, mantēlium, mantīlium, mantēlum, mantellum

Judging semantically likely containing manus (“hand”) and tergere (“to wipe, to rub”), compare Late Latin manutergium, but the morphological processes involved are murky, considering also the variants, the relationship of which is not without doubts, and their obscuration by scribal error. In late and vulgar Latin it was confounded with and driven away by diminutive forms of the Celtic mantus, mantum (“cloak”).

mantēle n (genitive mantēlis); third declension

1. cloth to wipe hands or mouth, towel, napkin
   • 29 BCE – 19 BCE, Virgil, Aeneid I.701–702:

     Dant famuli manibus lymphas, Cereremque canistris
     expediunt, tonsisque ferunt mantelia villis.

     The servants give the hands waters, and deal corn from wicker baskets, and bring towels of smooth hair.

2. (post-classical) tablecloth

Third declension neuter “pure” i-stem.

• Byzantine Greek: μανδίλιον (mandílion), μαντίλιον (mantílion), μανδήλη (mandḗlē)
  • Greek: μαντήλα (mantíla)
  • → Arabic: مَنْدِيل‎ (mandīl)
    • → Amharic: መንዲል (mändil)
    • → English: mandil, mendil (exotism, variously via Arabic, Turkish, and Persian)
    • → French: mandil, mendil (exotism, variously via Arabic, Turkish, and Persian)
    • → German: Mendil (exotism, variously via Arabic, Turkish, and Persian)
    • → Ge'ez: መንዲል (mändil)
    • → Persian: مندیل‎ (mendil)
    • → Spanish: mandil
    • → Classical Syriac: ܡܰܢܕܝ݇ܠܴܐ‎ (mandīlā) (in post-Islamic occurences, while earlier occurences are directly from Greek)
    • → Tigre: መንዲል (mändil)
    • → Tigrinya: መንዲል (mändil)
    • → Ottoman Turkish: مندیل‎ (mendil)
      • Turkish: mendil
      • → Albanian: mindil
      • → Aromanian: mandila, mendil
  • → Classical Syriac: ܡܰܢܕܝ݇ܠܴܐ‎ (mandīlā)
• → Spanish: mantel
  • → Classical Nahuatl: mantēlex

• mappa

• Anne Viola Siebert (199) Instrumenta Sacra. Untersuchungen zu römischen Opfer-, Kult- und Priestergeräten (Religionsgeschichtliche Versuche und Vorarbeiten; 44) (in German), Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, page 262
• mantele in Gaffiot, Félix (1934) Dictionnaire Illustré Latin-Français, Hachette
• mantele in Charlton T. Lewis and Charles Short (1879) A Latin Dictionary, Oxford: Clarendon Press