viaticum

From Latin viāticum (“travelling-money, provisions for a journey”), from viāticus (“of a road or journey”), from via (“road”).

• (UK) IPA^(key): /vʌɪˈatɪkəm/

viaticum (plural viaticums or viatica)

1. The Eucharist, when given to a person who is dying or one in danger of death.
   • 1971, Keith Thomas, Religion and the Decline of Magic (nonfiction), Folio Society; republished as Religion and the Decline of Magic: Studies in Popular Beliefs in Sixteenth and Seventeenth-Century England, Penguin Books, 2003, →ISBN, page 37:

     […] from Anglo-Saxon times there had been a deep conviction that to receive the viaticum was a virtual death sentence which would make subsequent recovery impossible.

2. (often figuratively) Provisions, money, or other supplies given to someone setting off on a long journey.
   • 1885, Sir Richard Burton, “Night 20”, in The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night (fiction), Kama Shastra Society, translation of One Thousand and One Nights; republished 1978, →ISBN:

     Towards night-fall he entered a town called Sa’adiyah where he alighted and took out somewhat of his viaticum and ate.

   • 1971, Anthony Burgess, M/F (fiction), Jonathan Cape; republished Penguin Books, 2004, →ISBN, page 184:

     That viaticum I had been made to drink had undoubtedly been spiked with cantharides or something.

3. A portable altar.

   (The addition of quotations indicative of this usage is being sought):

• viaticum on Wikipedia.Wikipedia

Substantivization of the neuter form of the adjective viāticus (“pertaining to a journey or traveling”).

• (Classical) IPA^(key): /wiˈaː.ti.kum/, [wiˈaː.tɪ.kʊ̃]
• (Ecclesiastical) IPA^(key): /viˈa.ti.kum/, [viˈaː.ti.kum]

viāticum n (genitive viāticī); second declension

1. travelling-money; provision for a journey
2. (figuratively) a journey
3. resources; means
4. money made abroad, especially as a soldier, or used to travel abroad

Second-declension noun (neuter).

• viāticātus
• viāticulum

• via
• viāticus
• viātor
• viātōrius

• viaticum in Charlton T. Lewis and Charles Short (1879) A Latin Dictionary, Oxford: Clarendon Press
• viaticum in Charlton T. Lewis (1891) An Elementary Latin Dictionary, New York: Harper & Brothers
• viaticum in Charles du Fresne du Cange’s Glossarium Mediæ et Infimæ Latinitatis (augmented edition, 1883–1887)
• viaticum in Gaffiot, Félix (1934) Dictionnaire Illustré Latin-Français, Hachette
• viaticum in Harry Thurston Peck, editor (1898) Harper's Dictionary of Classical Antiquities, New York: Harper & Brothers
• viaticum in William Smith et al., editor (1890) A Dictionary of Greek and Roman Antiquities, London: William Wayte. G. E. Marindin