murgiso

Latin

Etymology

Unknown, a word with only remote attestations and deemed foreign. Compare Old Armenian մրգուզ (mrguz, “base, mean; obscure”), perhaps together with it from a Semitic term belonging to the root ر ج س (r-j-s) related to filth, disgrace. Formally it looks like the active participle of form IV, *مُرْجِس (*murjis), which would signify “someone who does filthy business” or “who is filthy”, perhaps relating to affairs specific to Judaea or Syria, while the Armenian term matches the passive participle of form I, مَرْجُوس (marjūs, “filthy”). However these measures are unusual in Northwest Semitic and the Latin term might be directly borrowed from Classical Syriac ܡܪܓܙܢܐܼ (/⁠margəzānā⁠/, “quarrelsome; one who provokes to anger”) from the root ܪ-ܓ-ܙ (r-ɡ-z) related to enragement, the ending of which a Latin speaker naturally identifies with ō, ōnis, the long /ɑ/ having the quality /ɔ/ in Syriac depending on the dialect, and to which the Armenian is also possibly related.

Pronunciation

• (Classical Latin) IPA^(key): /ˈmur.ɡi.soː/, [ˈmʊrɡɪs̠oː]
• (modern Italianate Ecclesiastical) IPA^(key): /ˈmur.d͡ʒi.so/, [ˈmurd͡ʒis̬o]

Noun

murgisō m (genitive murgisōnis); third declension

1. A crafty advocate, a shrewd shyster

Declension

Third-declension noun.

Case	Singular	Plural
Nominative	murgisō	murgisōnēs
Genitive	murgisōnis	murgisōnum
Dative	murgisōnī	murgisōnibus
Accusative	murgisōnem	murgisōnēs
Ablative	murgisōne	murgisōnibus
Vocative	murgisō	murgisōnēs

References

• “murgiso”, in Charlton T. Lewis and Charles Short (1879) A Latin Dictionary, Oxford: Clarendon Press
• murgiso in Gaffiot, Félix (1934) Dictionnaire illustré latin-français, Hachette.
• “murgis(s)o” in volume 8, part 3, column 1672, line 5–11 in the Thesaurus Linguae Latinae (TLL Open Access), Berlin (formerly Leipzig): De Gruyter (formerly Teubner), 1900–present