calx

From Latin calx (“lime”). Doublet of cauk and chalk.

• IPA^(key): /kælks/

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• Rhymes: -ælks

calx (plural calces or calxes)

1. (now chiefly historical) The substance which remains after a metal or mineral has been thoroughly burnt, once seen as being the essential substance left after the expulsion of phlogiston, but now recognised as being the metallic oxide (or, in some cases, the metal in a state of sublimation).
   • 1796, Erasmus Darwin, “[Class III. Diseases of Volition.] Ordo I. Increased Volition. Genus II. With Increased Actions of the Organs of Sense.”, in Zoonomia; or, The Laws of Organic Life, volume II, London: […] J[oseph] Johnson, […], →OCLC, paragraph 12, page 375:

     [S]ome ladies apply to what are termed coſmetics under various names, which crowd the newspapers. Of theſe the white has deſtroyed the health of thouſands; a calx, or magiſtery, of biſmuth is ſuppoſed to be ſold in the ſhops for this purpoſe; but it is either, I am informed, in part or entirely white lead or ceruffa. […] The real calx of biſmuth would probably have the ſame ill effect.

   • 2004, Robert E Schofield, The Enlightened Joseph Priestley, Pennsylvania State University, page 179:

     The regeneration of mercury from its calx, without addition of any other substance, had been a chief example for anti-phlogiston, but that could, as Kirwan showed, be explained in a way consistent with phlogiston theory.

2. In the Eton College wall game, an area at the end of the field where a shy can be scored by lifting the ball against the wall with one's foot.

• (Classical) IPA^(key): /kalks/, [käɫ̪ks̠]
• (modern Italianate Ecclesiastical) IPA^(key): /kalks/, [kälks]

Possibly from Ancient Greek χάλιξ (khálix, “pebble”), in any case of substrate origin.[1]

calx f (genitive calcis); third declension

1. limestone
2. chalk
3. the finish line

Third-declension noun (i-stem).

Borrowings

Uncertain, with possibilities including:[1]

• An extension of the Proto-Indo-European root *(s)kel- (“to bend”).
• Non-Indo-European (possibly Etruscan) origin;[2][3] however, de Vaan notes the lack of a "concrete comparandum" for this.
• From Proto-Indo-European *klHk(ᵂ)-(n)-, related to Serbo-Croatian kuk (“thigh, hip”), Bulgarian кълка (kǎlka, “hip”), Russian колк (kolk, “bony stump”), Latvian kulksnis (“hock”), Lithuanian kulksnis (“ankle”), Old Prussian culczi (“hip”)

calx f (genitive calcis); third declension

1. (anatomy) heel (of the foot)

   Synonyms: tālus, (Medieval Latin) tālō

Third-declension noun (i-stem).

• (limestone) “calx”, in Charlton T. Lewis and Charles Short (1879) A Latin Dictionary, Oxford: Clarendon Press
• (heel) “calx”, in Charlton T. Lewis and Charles Short (1879) A Latin Dictionary, Oxford: Clarendon Press
• “calx”, in Charlton T. Lewis (1891) An Elementary Latin Dictionary, New York: Harper & Brothers
• calx 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)
• calx in Gaffiot, Félix (1934) Dictionnaire illustré latin-français, Hachette.