viaticum

From Latin viāticum (“travelling-money, provisions for a journey”), from viāticus (“of a road or journey”), from via (“road”). Doublet of voyage.

• (UK) IPA^(key): /vʌɪˈatɪkəm/

viaticum (plural viaticums or viatica)

1. (especially Catholicism) The Eucharist, when given to a person who is dying or one in danger of death.
   • 1971, Keith Thomas, Religion and the Decline of Magic (nonfiction), Folio Society; republished as Religion and the Decline of Magic: Studies in Popular Beliefs in Sixteenth and Seventeenth-Century England, Penguin Books, 2003, →ISBN, page 37:

     […] from Anglo-Saxon times there had been a deep conviction that to receive the viaticum was a virtual death sentence which would make subsequent recovery impossible.

2. (often figurative) Provisions, money, or other supplies given to someone setting off on a long journey.
   • 1885, “Night 20”, in Sir Richard Burton, transl., The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night (fiction), Kama Shastra Society, translation of أَلْفُ لَيْلَةٍ وَلَيْلَةٌ [ʔalfu laylatin walaylatun, One Thousand and One Nights] (in Arabic); republished 1978, →ISBN:

     Towards night-fall he entered a town called Sa’adiyah where he alighted and took out somewhat of his viaticum and ate.

   • 1971, Anthony Burgess, M/F (fiction), Jonathan Cape; republished Penguin Books, 2004, →ISBN, page 184:

     That viaticum I had been made to drink had undoubtedly been spiked with cantharides or something.

3. A portable altar.

   (The addition of quotations indicative of this usage is being sought:)

• viaticum on Wikipedia.Wikipedia

Substantivization of the neuter form of the adjective viāticus (“pertaining to a journey or traveling”).

• (Classical) IPA^(key): /u̯iˈaː.ti.kum/, [u̯iˈäːt̪ɪkʊ̃ˑ]
• (modern Italianate Ecclesiastical) IPA^(key): /viˈa.ti.kum/, [viˈäːt̪ikum]

viāticum n (genitive viāticī); second declension

1. travelling-money; provision for a journey
2. (figuratively) a journey
3. resources; means
4. money made abroad, especially as a soldier, or used to travel abroad

Second-declension noun (neuter).

• viāticātus
• viāticulum

• via
• viāticus
• viātor, viatrix
• viātōrius

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