lemures

See also: lémures and lêmures

English

Etymology

From Latin lemurēs. See lemur.

Noun

1. The spirits or ghosts of the dead.
   • (Can we date this quote by John Milton and provide title, author’s full name, and other details?)

     The Lars and Lemures moan with midnight plaint.

Part or all of this entry has been imported from the 1913 edition of Webster’s Dictionary, which is now free of copyright and hence in the public domain. The imported definitions may be significantly out of date, and any more recent senses may be completely missing.
(See the entry for “lemures”, in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, Springfield, Mass.: G. & C. Merriam, 1913, →OCLC.)

Anagrams

• relumes

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Latin

Etymology

According to de Vaan, from a substrate source along with Ancient Greek Λαμία (Lamía), possibly Etruscan or Anatolian. The two words may have existed as a late Proto-Indo-European stem *lem (“ghost, nocturnal spirit”).

Pronunciation

• (Classical Latin) IPA^(key): /ˈle.mu.reːs/, [ˈɫ̪ɛmʊreːs̠]
• (modern Italianate Ecclesiastical) IPA^(key): /ˈle.mu.res/, [ˈlɛːmures]

Noun

lemurēs m pl (genitive lemurum); third declension

1. shades, ghosts of the departed
2. ghosts, spectres

Declension

Third-declension noun, plural only.

Case	Plural
Nominative	lemurēs
Genitive	lemurum
Dative	lemuribus
Accusative	lemurēs
Ablative	lemuribus
Vocative	lemurēs

Descendants

• English: lemur, lemures

References

• “lemures”, in Charlton T. Lewis (1891) An Elementary Latin Dictionary, New York: Harper & Brothers
• “lemures”, in Harry Thurston Peck, editor (1898), Harper's Dictionary of Classical Antiquities, New York: Harper & Brothers
• “lemures”, in William Smith, editor (1848), A Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology, London: John Murray
• “lemures”, in William Smith et al., editor (1890), A Dictionary of Greek and Roman Antiquities, London: William Wayte. G. E. Marindin
• De Vaan, Michiel (2008) Etymological Dictionary of Latin and the other Italic Languages (Leiden Indo-European Etymological Dictionary Series; 7)‎^[1], Leiden, Boston: Brill, →ISBN
• Template:R:ine:Roberts
• Mallory, J. P., Adams, D. Q. (2006) The Oxford introduction to Proto-Indo-European and the Proto-Indo-European world, Oxford University Press