L. Raty wrote: "Tachyspiza minulla": OS minullus. Jobling gives: "minula / minulla / minullum / minullus Med. L. minulus very small (dim. from L. minus less)." I'd be most interested if anybody could show me a Latin dictionary that actually includes this word--it is certainly absent from classical Latin dictionaries, but also, eg., Niermeyer's Medieval Latin-French/English Dictionary seems to ignore it. Does it really exist?.
In a Seebohm article about Sylvia in an old Ibis the editors note for Sylvia minula Hume a Lesser Whitethroat "Probably a misprint for minuta there being no such Latin word "minula". Edd. (Ibis V. III (1879) p.315)
Thanks Mark. At least I'm not the only one who fails to find this word.
minutus,
-a,
-um does exist.
parvulus,
-a,
-um, the diminutive form of
parvus,
-a,
-um = small, is the classical word to mean very small.
Stricly speaking, Jobling's interpretation, "dim. from L.
minus less", sounds incorrect to me (sorry, James, if you're out there): "
minus less" is not an adjective, it's an adverb--an invariable word, and not one that would normally be used as a name. When a species has '
minus' as its specific name, this is the neuter of
minor,
-or,
-us = smaller, the comparative form of
parvus. Of course one might imagine to add a diminutive suffix to
minor (although I'm not fully clear what the meaning of the resulting word would be), but this would then produce '
minorulus' (the genitive of
minor is
minoris), not
minulus.
Falco minullus Daudin, 1800 seems to be the earliest "minula / minulla / minullum / minullus" in ornithology. But this name was not actually formed from a Latin word: it is the latinization of a French vernacular coined by Levaillant, "
Le Minul(l)e" (two 'l's in the text, one only on the plate), a name that Levaillant used as a masculine noun in French. 'Minulle' is not a standard French word, but this is no real surprise as it was quite usual for Lavaillant to forge names by modifying/combining existing words (one well known example being 'Oricou', his name for the Lappet-faced Vulture, which is a portmanteau involving 'oreille' = ear, and 'cou' = neck). In the case of "Le Minulle", his intent was clearly to convey the fact that the bird was very small, but it's hard to be sure how he formed the word exactly. (Contraction of the French word 'minuscule' = tiny? I don't think it too likely that the process involved Latin.)
