picus

See also: Picus, PICUs, pičus, and píčus

Latin

From Proto-Italic *pikos, from Proto-Indo-European *(s)peyk- (“woodpecker; magpie”), whence also Latin pīca (“magpie”).

Romance evidence points to a form with -cc-, perhaps onomatopoeic and/or influenced by Vulgar Latin *pīccāre (“to strike, sting, peck”) and/or Proto-Germanic *pikkōną (“to pick, peck, prick”). Cf. Vulgar Latin *pīcca (“pick-axe”).

Cognate with Umbrian peico (acc.sg.), Sanskrit पिक (piká, “cuckoo”), German Specht (“woodpecker”), Swedish spett (“crowbar, skewer; kind of woodpecker”).^[1]^[2]

pīcus m (genitive pīcī); second declension

^ De Vaan, Michiel (2008) “pīcus”, in Etymological Dictionary of Latin and the other Italic Languages (Leiden Indo-European Etymological Dictionary Series; 7), Leiden, Boston: Brill, →ISBN, page 464
^ Walther von Wartburg (1928–2002) “pīcus”, in Französisches Etymologisches Wörterbuch, volumes 8: Patavia–Pix, page 432

“picus”, in Charlton T. Lewis and Charles Short (1879) A Latin Dictionary, Oxford: Clarendon Press
“picus”, in Charlton T. Lewis (1891) An Elementary Latin Dictionary, New York: Harper & Brothers
picus 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)
picus in Gaffiot, Félix (1934) Dictionnaire illustré latin-français, Hachette.
“picus”, in Harry Thurston Peck, editor (1898), Harper's Dictionary of Classical Antiquities, New York: Harper & Brothers
“picus”, in William Smith, editor (1848), A Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology, London: John Murray