vulgus

English

Noun

vulgus (plural vulguses)

1. (UK, education, historical) A school exercise in which pupils are tasked with writing a short piece of Greek or Latin verse on a given subject.
   • 1857, Thomas Hughes, Tom Brown's School Days:

     So the table was cleared, the cloth restored, and the three fell to work with Gradus and dictionary upon the morning's vulgus.

Latin

Alternative forms

• volgus

Etymology

May be from Proto-Italic *wolgos or *welgos, perhaps from Proto-Indo-European *welH- (“to throng, crowd”), whence also Welsh gwala (“sufficiency, enough”), Middle Breton gwalc'h (“abundance”), Sanskrit वर्ग (varga, “group, division”); see also Latin volvō (“to roll, turn over”) for the same or a similar root.

Some have attempted, without success, to link it to Proto-Indo-European *pl̥h₁-go-, whence English folk.

Pronunciation

• (Classical Latin) IPA^(key): [ˈwʊɫ.ɡʊs]
• (modern Italianate Ecclesiastical) IPA^(key): [ˈvul.ɡus]

Noun

vulgus n sg or m sg (genitive vulgī); second declension

1. (uncountable) the common people
   • c. 84 BCE – 54 BCE, Catullus, Carmina 72.3:

     Dīlēxī tum tē nōn tantum ut vulgus amīcam, sed pater ut gnatōs dīligit et generōs.

     I loved you then, not only as the common sort love a mistress, but as a father loves his children and sons-in-law.

2. (uncountable) the public
3. throng, crowd

   Synonyms: multitūdō, turba

4. gathering

Declension

Second declension noun (neuter or masculine, with nominative/accusative/vocative in -us).

	singular
nominative	vulgus
genitive	vulgī
dative	vulgō
accusative	vulgus vulgum
ablative	vulgō vulgū
vocative	vulgus vulge

Derived terms

• vulgāris
• vulgārius
• vulgivagus
• vulgō

Related terms

• vulgāritās
• vulgāriter
• vulgātē
• vulgātor
• vulgātus

Descendants

• → Galician: vulgo
• → Italian: volgo
• → Portuguese: vulgo
• → Romanian: vulg
• → Sicilian: vulgu
• → Spanish: vulgo

References

• “vulgus”, in Charlton T. Lewis and Charles Short (1879), A Latin Dictionary, Oxford: Clarendon Press
• "vulgus", in Charles du Fresne du Cange, Glossarium Mediæ et Infimæ Latinitatis (augmented edition with additions by D. P. Carpenterius, Adelungius and others, edited by Léopold Favre, 1883–1887)
• “vulgus”, in Gaffiot, Félix (1934), Dictionnaire illustré latin-français, Hachette.
• Carl Meißner; Henry William Auden (1894), Latin Phrase-Book‎^[1], London: Macmillan and Co.
  • to divulge, make public: efferre or edere aliquid in vulgus
    
  • to be a subject for gossip: in ora vulgi abire
    
  • a demagogue, agitator: plebis dux, vulgi turbator, civis turbulentus, civis rerum novarum cupidus