delectus

From Latin delectus (“selection”), from deligo (“to select”).

delectus (plural delectuses)

1. (obsolete) An elementary reader (collection of passages) for learners of a language
   • 1871-2, George Eliot, Middlemarch, volume I, book IV, chapter 37

     If she spoke with any keenness of interest to Mr. Casaubon, he heard her with an air of patience as if she had given a quotation from the Delectus familiar to him from his tender years, and sometimes mentioned curtly what ancient sects or personages had held similar ideas, as if there were too much of that sort in stock already; at other times he would inform her that she was mistaken, and reassert what her remark had questioned.

   • 1872, Matthew Arnold, “General Report for the Year 1872”, in Sir Francis Sanford, editor, Reports on Elementary Schools 1852-1882:

     I am convinced that for [t]his purpose the best way would be to disregard classical Latin entirely, to use neither Cornelius Nepos, nor Eutropius, nor Cæsar, nor any delectus from them, but to use the Latin Bible, the Vulgate.

Perfect passive participle of dēligō (“[I] pick off; select”).

dēlēctus (feminine dēlēcta, neuter dēlēctum); first/second-declension participle

1. picked off, having been picked off, plucked off, having been plucked off; culled, having been culled
2. chosen, having been chosen, selected, having been selected

First/second-declension adjective.

dēlēctus m (genitive dēlēctūs); fourth declension

1. selection, choice, distinction
2. levy, recruiting
   • c. 52 BCE, Julius Caesar, Commentarii de Bello Gallico VII.1:

     delectum tota provincia habere instituit

     He determined to have a levy throughout the entire province

Fourth-declension noun.

• Catalan: delit

• “delectus”, in Charlton T. Lewis and Charles Short (1879) A Latin Dictionary, Oxford: Clarendon Press
• “delectus”, in Charlton T. Lewis (1891) An Elementary Latin Dictionary, New York: Harper & Brothers
• delectus in Gaffiot, Félix (1934) Dictionnaire illustré latin-français, Hachette.
• “delectus”, in Harry Thurston Peck, editor (1898), Harper's Dictionary of Classical Antiquities, New York: Harper & Brothers
• “delectus”, in William Smith et al., editor (1890), A Dictionary of Greek and Roman Antiquities, London: William Wayte. G. E. Marindin