obex

English

Etymology

From Latin obex (“barrier, wall”).

Pronunciation

• (Received Pronunciation) IPA^(key): /ˈəʊ.bɛks/

  • Audio (Southern England):

    (file)

• (General American) IPA^(key): /ˈoʊˌbɛks/

Noun

obex (plural obices)

1. (anatomy) A small, crescentic fold of white matter that covers the inferior angle of the floor of the fourth ventricle.

References

• “obex”, in Lexico, Dictionary.com; Oxford University Press, 2019–2022.
• “obex”, in Merriam-Webster.com Online Dictionary, Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster, 1996–present.

Latin

Alternative forms

• obiex, objex

Etymology

Etymology tree

Proto-Indo-European *h₁ep-der.

Proto-Indo-European *h₁épsder.

Proto-Indo-European *h₁óp(i)

Proto-Italic *op

Latin ob

Latin ob-

Proto-Indo-European *(H)yeh₁-

Proto-Indo-European *-kt

Proto-Indo-European *(H)yéh₁kt ~ *(H)ih₁kéntder.

Latin iaciō

Latin obiciō

Proto-Indo-European *-s

Latin -s

Latin ō̆bex

From obiciō (“to throw or put before or towards”) + -s.

Pronunciation

• (modern Italianate Ecclesiastical) IPA^(key): [ˈɔː.beks]

The nominative singular does not occur in Classical Latin. The oblique stem obic- may have originally been pronounced /objik-/, with an unwritten /j/ sound, making the first syllable /ob/ (which contains the short vowel /o/ and scans as a heavy syllable because of the coda consonant /b/). The pronunciation of the letter I as /ji/ occurred also in the verb obiciō and a number of other prefixed words derived from iaciō. For example, in Attic Nights 4.17, Aulus Gellius indicates that the learned grammarian Sulpicius Apollinaris read obicibus with a short o and a doubled ("gemina") letter i where it occurs in Vergil's Georgics with heavy-light-light-heavy scansion; this implies a pronunciation /ob.ji.ki.bus/.

Pronunciations starting with /o.bi/ are attested in some poets of the 1st century AD; e.g. ŏbĭcēs in Silius Italicus, Punica 4.24. (Ernout and Meillet interprets this as a spelling pronunciation.) Gellius, writing in the second century, criticizes as ignorant those who pronounce obiciēbat and subices with long vowels (i.e. /oː/ and /uː/) for the sake of the meter. Thus, it appears that by the imperial era, not all Latin speakers pronounced the letter I as /ji/ in words like this.

The nominative singular form appears as obex—scanned ōbex—in the late poets Sidonius Apollinaris and Avitus of Vienne, who may have had in mind the pronunciation with /oː/ that Gellius proscribes. Some modern scholars assume the nominative singular form was originally /ob.jeks/, with /j/ as in the oblique forms. The spelling obiex is attested in the "Glossae Aynardi" (a glossary attributed to Aynardus and dated to the year 969, attested in an eleventh-century manuscript, the Codex Metensis).

Noun

ō̆bex m or f (genitive ō̆bicis); third declension

1. (literal) a bolt, bar; a barrier, wall

   Synonyms: sera, pessulus

   • c. 37 BCE – 30 BCE, Vergilius, Georgicon 2.1:

     unde tremor terris, qua vi maria alta tumescant
     obicibus ruptis rursus que in se ipsa residant

     (please add an English translation of this quotation)

   • c. 83 CE – 96 CE, Silius Italicus, Punica 4.24:

     Hinc tēla accipiunt arcēs, ac rōbora portīs / et fīdōs certant obicēs accersere silva; / circumdant fossās.

     • 1934 translation by J. D. Duff

       The citadels too are stored with missiles; men hasten to bring from the forest oak-timber for their gates and trusty bars, and dig moats around.

   • c. 83 CE – 96 CE, Silius Italicus, Punica 13.252:

     Nec spēs obsessīs ultrā reserāta tuērī / moenia: convertunt gressūs recipīque precantīs / (īnfandum) exclūdunt sociōs, dum cardine versō / obnīxī torquent obicēs, mūnīmina sēra.

     • 1934 translation by J. D. Duff

       The besieged could no longer hope to defend walls already unbarred. They beat a retreat to the town, and (horrible to tell) shut out their comrades as they begged to be admitted: the hinges turned and the bolts were forcibly thrust home, when such precautions were too late.

   • c. 430 CE – c. 489 CE, Sidonius Apollinaris, carmina 2.492:

     proferat hic veterum thalamos discrimine partos
     Graecia, ni pudor est: reparatis Pisa quadrigis
     suscitet Oenomaum, natae quem fraude cadentem
     cerea destituit resolutis axibus obex

     • 1936 translation by W. B. Anderson

       Here let Greece bring forward, unless she be ashamed, those marriages of her ancients which were won by peril. Let Pisa bring back her four-horse chariot and revive Oenomaus, who fell by a daughter’s guile, when the waxen linch-pins betrayed him, unloosing the axles

   • c. 490 CE – 517 CE, Avitus Viennensis, Poematum de Mosaicae historiae gestis 1.281:

     Fit fluvius pereunte lacu: tum redditur alveo
     Pristina riparum conclusis fluctibus obex,
     Donec dividuum spargens per devia finem
     Gurgite septeno patulum percurrat in aequor.

     • 1997 translation by George W. Shea

       As the lake it formed disappears, it becomes once more a river. Then the ancient barrier of its banks is restored to its channel, and its waves are confined, until finally its divided mouth is scattered over distant wastes as it runs in seven streams to the open sea.

2. (transferred sense) a hindrance, impediment, obstacle
   • c. 48 BCE, Julius Caesar, Commentarii de bello civili 3.54:

     [...], et quique intermissis diebus alteram noctem subnubilam nactus obstructis omnibus castrorum portis et ad impediendum obicibus obiectis tertia inita vigilia silentio exercitum eduxit et se in antiquas munitiones recipit.

     [...], five days after, he (Pompey) found another dark and cloudy night where, the camp's entrances walled up and, to make their forcing even harder, obstacles having been laid, he led stealthly his host out at the third watch (around midnight) and made back to his previous defense works.

Inflection

Third-declension noun.

	singular	plural
nominative	ō̆bex	ō̆bicēs
genitive	ō̆bicis	ō̆bicum
dative	ō̆bicī	ō̆bicibus
accusative	ō̆bicem	ō̆bicēs
ablative	ō̆bice	ō̆bicibus
vocative	ō̆bex	ō̆bicēs

Related terms

• obiciō

Descendants

Descendants

• → English: obex
• → Italian: obice
• → Portuguese: óbice
• → Spanish: óbice

Further reading

• “obex”, in Charlton T. Lewis and Charles Short (1879), A Latin Dictionary, Oxford: Clarendon Press
• “obex”, in Charlton T. Lewis (1891), An Elementary Latin Dictionary, New York: Harper & Brothers
• “obex”, in Gaffiot, Félix (1934), Dictionnaire illustré latin-français, Hachette.
• “obex”, in Harry Thurston Peck, editor (1898), Harper’s Dictionary of Classical Antiquities, New York: Harper & Brothers
• “obex”, in William Smith et al., editor (1890), A Dictionary of Greek and Roman Antiquities, London: William Wayte. G. E. Marindin