piceous

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English

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WOTD – 28 January 2020

Etymology

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The elytra or sheaths over the hindwings of the ground beetle Trichotichnus dichrous are described as piceous or very dark brown (sense 2)

From Latin piceus (“like pitch; pitch-black”) +‎ -ous (suffix forming adjectives denoting possession or presence of a quality). Piceus is derived from pix (“pitch, tar”) (ultimately from Proto-Indo-European *peyH- (“fat; milk”)) + -eus (suffix forming adjectives indicating the sources of attributes). The English word is cognate with Italian piceo (“like pitch; of a dark brown colour”), Spanish piceo (“like pitch; of a dark brown colour”).[1]

Pronunciation

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Adjective

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piceous (comparative more piceous, superlative most piceous)

  1. (obsolete, rare) Of or pertaining to pitch (“a sticky, dark brown substance obtained from distilling turpentine or wood tar, or crude oil or tar”); having a quality like pitch; pitchlike, pitchy.
    • 1741, Philip Yorke, 2nd Earl of Hardwicke et al., “Letter XCIX. Otanes, Chief Architect and Superintendent of the Royal Places, to Cleander.”, in Athenian Letters: or, The Epistolary Correspondence of an Agent of the King of Persia, Residing at Athens during the Peloponnesian War. […], London: James Bettenham, →OCLC; Athenian Letters: [...] In Two Volumes, new edition, volume I, London: Printed for T[homas] Cadell Jun. and W[illiam] Davies […], 1798, →OCLC, page 425:
      I do not therefore require of you to believe, that the ancient rocks and compact bodies were diſſolved, but that many new ones were formed by the deluge, which had incloſed the ſpoils of the ſea within them. [...] What other rational account will you give of that ſhell of a nautilus, which was found buried in a ſtratum of a piceous ſubstance below the bed of the river Arbis, where Artaxerxes commanded a bridge to be built over it?
  2. (chiefly entomology) Resembling pitch in colour; a very dark brown.
    piceous:  
    • 1806, Charles Linné [i.e., Carl Linnaeus], William Turton, A General System of Nature, through the Three Grand Kingdoms of Animals, Vegetables, and Minerals, […] In Seven Volumes, volume II (Animal Kingdom), part I (Insects), London: Printed [by Dewick & Clarke] for Lackington, Allen, and Co. […], →OCLC, page 215:
      Piciroſtris. Oblong, black: ſilvery-ſilky: ſnout half way and legs piceous.
    • 1828 June 17, Thomas Bell, “VII. Description of a New Species of Agama, Brought from the Columbia River by Mr. [David] Douglass.”, in The Transactions of the Linnean Society of London, volume XVI, London: Printed by Richard Taylor, […]; and by Longman, Rees, Orme, Brown, Green, and Longman, […]; and William Wood, […], published 1833, →OCLC, pages 105–106:
      The colour of the upper part is a mixture of yellowish-white and piceous disposed in dots, exactly resembling mosaic work, [...]
    • 1868 February 6, Andrew Murray, “On an Undescribed Light-giving Coleopterous Larva (Provisionally Named Astraptor illuminator)”, in The Journal of the Linnean Society. Zoology, volume X, London: Sold at the [Linnean] Society [of London]’s apartments, […]; and by Longmans, Green, Reader, and Dyer, and Williams and Norgate, published 1870, →OCLC, paragraph 16, page 90:
      Abdomen with shining cinereous tomentum, and with five lines of piceous spots; [...] Tibiæ piceous towards the tips; tarsi piceous.
    • 1940 September, R. A. Cushman, A Review of the Parasitic Wasps of the Ichneumonid Genus Exenterus Hartig (United States Department of Agriculture Miscellaneous Publication; no. 354), Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, →OCLC, page 12:
      Front and middle legs yellow, coxae black behind, femora piceous posteriorly; [...]
    • 1995, Anders N. Nilsson, Mogens Holmen, “Subfamily Colymbetinae”, in N. P. Kristensen, editor, The Aquatic Adephagia (Coleoptera) of Fennoscandia and Denmark. II. Dytiscidae (Fauna Entomologica Scandinavica), volume 32, Leiden, New York, N.Y.: E[vert] J[an] Leiden, →ISBN, →ISSN, paragraph 95, page 110:
      Agabus elongatus [...] Legs rufous; metafemur piceous.
    • 2008, Roger Rosenblatt, chapter 1, in Beet: A Novel, New York, N.Y.: Ecco Press, →ISBN:
      From the year of its establishment, darkness seemed to have found a home in Beet College. Dark pink for the brick buildings, dark green for the doorjambs and the benches, dark iron for the hinges, dark stone for Nathaniel's Tomb; darkness in the piceous roots of trees that broke through the earth like bones through skin.
    • 2018, Jan Klimaszewski et al., “Tribe Homalotini Heer, 1839”, in Aleocharine Rove Beetles of Eastern Canada (Coleoptera, Staphylinidae, Aleocharinae): A Glimpse of Megadiversity, Cham, Switzerland: Springer Nature, →DOI, →ISBN, paragraph 162, page 378:
      Gyrophaenia uteana Casey [...] [H]ead piceous, pronotum dark rufo-testaceous to piceous; elytra reddish-brown with sutural region and posterior angles piceous, abdomen yellowish- or reddish-brown, apical portion often darker, piceous; [...]

Translations

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References

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  1. ^ “piceous, adj.”, in OED Online Paid subscription required⁠, Oxford: Oxford University Press, March 2006; “piceous, adj.”, in Lexico, Dictionary.com; Oxford University Press, 2019–2022.

Further reading

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