Plautus

From Latin Titus Maccius Plautus, the latter two names traditionally held to be stage names, from plautus (“flat-footed, flap-eared”).

• (UK) IPA^(key): /ˈplɔːtəs/, /ˈplaʊtəs/
• (US) IPA^(key): /ˈplɔtəs/, /ˈplɑtəs/, /ˈplaʊtəs/

Plautus

1. A Roman comic playwright (c. 254 – 184 BC) of the Old Latin period.

• Plautine

• Plōtus

From plautus (“flat-footed; flap-eared”). In the case of the comic playwright Titus Maccius Plautus, sometimes said to be a personal agnomen from Umbrian dialect plōtus and sometimes self-styled as a stage name.

• (Classical) IPA^(key): /ˈplau̯.tus/, [ˈpɫ̪äu̯t̪ʊs̠]
• (modern Italianate Ecclesiastical) IPA^(key): /ˈplau̯.tus/, [ˈpläːu̯t̪us]

Plautus m sg (genitive Plautī); second declension

1. Plautus, a famous Roman comic playwright

   Postquam est mortem aptus Plautus, Comoedia luget...

   Since deft Plautus is dead, Comedy grieves...

2. a cognomen used by the gentes Bellia, Rubellia, Sergia, and others

   Gaius Rubellius Plautus

    

Second-declension noun, singular only.

• English: Plautus
• → Italian: Plauto

• “Plautus”, in Charlton T. Lewis and Charles Short (1879) A Latin Dictionary, Oxford: Clarendon Press
• Plautus in Gaffiot, Félix (1934) Dictionnaire illustré latin-français, Hachette.
• George Davis Chase, "Origin of Roman Praenomina", Harvard Studies in Classical Philology, Vol. 8, 1897, p. 110.