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Catellus, Caniculus. A Case of Semantic Interchange
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 22 April 2026
Extract
Of special interest in the Romance of Gaul and Spain are the descendants of catellus and caniculus. Within each group, as we shall see, there is considerable fluidity of sense, to such a degree that they come to be used interchangeably for ‘kitten’ and ‘puppy.‘ Of this state of affairs, the grammarians and lexicographers seem to be unaware.
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- Copyright © 1927 Linguistic Society of America
References
1 The problem of the single or double t in cat(t)us is discussed by García de Diego, Contributión al diccionario hispánico etimológico, §111.
2 A curious juxtaposition of the two is found in the following account (Osbertus de Miraculis Sancti Dunstani, cit. Du Cange) of an exorcism: ‘et quod in modum parvuli Cati discurreret Francigena lingua dicentibus, ille contra, qui linguae ipsius omnimodis inscius erat, subridens, eadem lingua similiter verbo diminutivo consonanter respondebat dicens: Non ut catulus, sed ut catellus’.
3 As to the form in -ellus being the less classical, Baehrens says: “Unberichtigt ist die Zurückweisung von catellus” (Sprachlicher Komment, z. App. Probi, 121). The Thesaurus Ling. Lat. gives both, with catellus marked 'a catulus deminutive.' We have in Varro, LL 9. 74, both forms: ‘ut est cista cistula cistella et canis catulus catellus’ cit. Language 2. 187 (Kent). See below for association of canis and catulus.
4 Mémoires de la Soc. de Ling, de Paris 14. 211 (Sainéan).
5 Boucoiran, Dict, des idiomes méridionaux.
6 Atlas Linguistique 1789.
7 García de Diego, op. cit. §109: ‘significa un animal fantástico que la gente supersticiosa se representa corno un enorme perro negro’. Cadejo>∗catic(u)-lu(m), just as caneja<canic(u)la (Roman. Etym. Wbch. §1586).
8 Varro, RR 3.4, speaking of rabbits and their prolific reproduction says: ‘etenim cum habent catulos recentes, alios in ventre habere reperiuntur.‘
9 Corpus Gloss. Lat., 5.550 (Götz).
10 Levy, Supplement-Wörterbuch; see also Roman. Etym. Wbch. 1763.
11 E.g. Sainéan's list of terms derived from the idea ‘dog’ and applied to machinery (loc. cit.). In Spanish gato similarly takes on a number of meanings, being applied to ‘pocketbook’, ‘iron hook’, ‘block and tackle’ (Dice, de la Real Acad. Española, 1925).
12 Riddle-Scheller's Lexicon totius Latinitatis.
13 García de Diego §96. Many verbs are formed on this substantive, e.g. encanijarse, encaniau.
14 Ibid. §111: ‘Ignoro en qué se apoyaría el gramático Virgilio, Epist., I, 110, para identificar catta con canis feminina.‘ Is there not more than one child who thinks of cat as the feminine of dog and even cow as the feminine of horse? Incidentally attention is called to the loose manner in which the passage from Virgilius was quoted.
15 Corpus Gloss. Lat. 3.318. 17; 437. 13 and, for catulus, 3.431. 10.