different between festuca vs fescue

Italian

Etymology

From Latin fest?ca.

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /fes?tu.ka/
• Rhymes: -uka
• Hyphenation: fe?stù?ca

Noun

festuca f (plural festuche)

1. straw

References

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

Latin

Alternative forms

• fist?ca (“ram, piledriver”), historically sometimes considered a separate word

Etymology

Perhaps connected to ferula, with a common earlier stem *fes-. De Vaan notes if suffixation is with +? -?cus as in several plant names: samb?cus (“elderberry”), alb?cus (“asphodel; asphodel bulb”), lact?ca (“lettuce”), the stem could be *festo. Gaffiot numbers the sense of ram, piledriver, usually spelt fist?ca, a separate word, but it is offered as an alternate spelling in De Vaan. Also compare fistula (“pipe, tube”).

Pronunciation

• (Classical) IPA^(key): /fes?tu?.ka/, [f?s??t?u?kä]
• (Vulgar) IPA^(key): /fes?tu?.ka/, [fes?tu?ka]
• (Ecclesiastical) IPA^(key): /fes?tu.ka/, [f?s?t?u?k?]

Noun

fest?ca f (genitive fest?cae); first declension

1. straw
2. stalk, stem
3. rod used to touch slaves in ceremonial manumission
4. ram, piledriver (often spelt fist?ca in this sense)
5. (Medieval Latin) rod as a symbol of legal authority

Declension

First-declension noun.

Derived terms

• d?fest?c?
• fest?c?ti?
• fest?c?

Descendants

• French: fétu
• ? Translingual: Festuca

References

• 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
• Niermeyer, Jan Frederik (1976) , “festuca”, in Mediae Latinitatis Lexicon Minus, Leiden, Boston: Brill

English

Etymology

From Old French festu (modern fétu), from Proto-Romance festu, from Latin fest?ca (“stalk, stem, straw”).

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /?f?skju?/

Noun

fescue (countable and uncountable, plural fescues)

1. (countable) A straw, wire, stick, etc., used chiefly to point out letters to children when learning to read.
   • 1997, Thomas Pynchon, Mason & Dixon

     ‘Now then,’ Mason rapping upon the Table’s Edge with a sinister-looking Fescue of Ebony, whose List of Uses simple Indication does not quite exhaust, whilst the Girls squirm pleasingly

2. A hardy grass commonly used to border golf fairways in temperate climates. Any member of the genus Festuca.
3. (countable) An instrument for playing on the harp; a plectrum.
   • c. 1610s, George Chapman, Batrachomyomachia

     with thy golden fescue play'dst upon
     Thy hollow harp

4. (countable) The style of a sundial.

Translations

Verb

fescue (third-person singular simple present fescues, present participle fescuing, simple past and past participle fescued)

1. To use a fescue, or teach with a fescue.
   • 1641, John Milton, Animadversions upon The Remonstrants Defence Against Smectymnuus.