siglum
English
WOTD – 14 January 2024
Etymology
Learned borrowing from Late Latin siglum (“abbreviation”), possibly a contracted form of:
- sigillum (“figurine, statuette; seal”), from signum (“figure, statue; seal, signet; mark, sign”) (ultimately from Proto-Indo-European *sek- (“to cut, sever; to cut off”) or *sekʷ- (“to follow”)) + -ulum (diminutive suffix);[1] or
- singulum, a singular form of singulus (“apiece; every; single”, adjective), ultimately from Proto-Indo-European *sem- (“one; together”).[2]
The plural form sigla is a learned borrowing from Late Latin sigla.
Pronunciation
- Singular:
- (Received Pronunciation, General American) IPA(key): /ˈsɪɡləm/
Audio (Southern England) (file) - Hyphenation: sig‧lum
- Plural:
- (Received Pronunciation, General American) IPA(key): /ˈsɪɡlə/
- Hyphenation: sig‧la
Noun
siglum (plural sigla)
- A letter or other symbol that stands for a name or word; specifically, one used in a modern literary work to refer to an early version of a text.
- (figurative) A thing which represents something else; a sign, a symbol.
- 1963, Vladimir Nabokov, chapter 2, in Michael Scammell, Vladimir Nabokov, transl., The Gift, London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson […], →OCLC, page 86:
- [H]e emerged onto a garden terrace where on the soft red sand one could make out the sigla of a summer day: the imprints of a dog's paws, the beaded tracks of a wagtail, the Dunlop stripe left by Tanya's bicycle, […]
Hyponyms
Derived terms
- siglarian
Translations
letter or other symbol that stands for a name or word
References
- “sigla, n.”, in OED Online
, Oxford, Oxfordshire: Oxford University Press, September 2023. - “siglum, n.”, in Lexico, Dictionary.com; Oxford University Press, 2019–2022.
Further reading
scribal abbreviation on Wikipedia.Wikipedia - “siglum, n.”, in Collins English Dictionary.
- “siglum”, in OneLook Dictionary Search.
Anagrams
Latin
Pronunciation
- (Classical) IPA(key): /ˈsi.ɡlum/, [ˈs̠ɪɡɫ̪ʊ̃ˑ]
- (modern Italianate Ecclesiastical) IPA(key): /ˈsi.ɡlum/, [ˈsiːɡlum]
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