pignus

English

Etymology

(deprecated template usage) [etyl] Latin

Noun

pignus (plural pignora)

1. (law, obsolete, Ancient Rome) A pledge or pawn.

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 The imported definitions may be significantly out of date, and any more recent senses may be completely missing.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 “pignus”, in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, Springfield, Mass.: G. & C. Merriam, 1913, →OCLC.)

Anagrams

• gins up, pungis, sign up, signup, sing up, spuing

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Latin

Etymology

Perhaps from Proto-Indo-European *peyǵ- or *peyḱ-.

Pronunciation

• (Classical Latin) IPA^(key): /ˈpiɡ.nus/, [ˈpɪŋnʊs̠]
• (modern Italianate Ecclesiastical) IPA^(key): /ˈpiɲ.ɲus/, [ˈpiɲːus]

Noun

pignus n (genitive pignoris); third declension

1. pledge, mortgage
2. hostage
3. wager, stake

Declension

Third-declension noun (neuter, imparisyllabic non-i-stem).

Case	Singular	Plural
Nominative	pignus	pignora
Genitive	pignoris	pignorum
Dative	pignorī	pignoribus
Accusative	pignus	pignora
Ablative	pignore	pignoribus
Vocative	pignus	pignora

Derived terms

• pignerō

Descendants

• Albanian: peng
• Italian: pegno
• Portuguese: penhor
• Spanish: peño, prenda

References

• “pignus”, in Charlton T. Lewis and Charles Short (1879) A Latin Dictionary, Oxford: Clarendon Press
• “pignus”, in Charlton T. Lewis (1891) An Elementary Latin Dictionary, New York: Harper & Brothers
• pignus in Charles du Fresne du Cange’s Glossarium Mediæ et Infimæ Latinitatis (augmented edition with additions by D. P. Carpenterius, Adelungius and others, edited by Léopold Favre, 1883–1887)
• pignus in Gaffiot, Félix (1934) Dictionnaire illustré latin-français, Hachette.
• “pignus”, in Harry Thurston Peck, editor (1898), Harper's Dictionary of Classical Antiquities, New York: Harper & Brothers
• “pignus”, in William Smith et al., editor (1890), A Dictionary of Greek and Roman Antiquities, London: William Wayte. G. E. Marindin