corbita

English

Etymology

From Latin corbita (“sailing freight ship”).

Noun

corbita (plural corbita or corbitas)

1. (historical, nautical) A two-masted merchant ship of Ancient Rome.
   • 1998, Eric Flint, David Drake, In the Heart of Darkness:

     The corbita was heading directly back to Chalcedon, on the Asian side of the Straits.

   • 2007, Yossi Dotan, Watercraft on World Coins: Europe, 1800-2005, page 51:

     The reverse depicts a Roman corbita of the third century CE against the background of a map of the Mediterranean Sea from Tunisia and Sicily in the west to the eastern end of that sea and two lions in the foreground.

   • 2013, Coulsdon Writers, Back to the Writing, page 48:

     Two corbitas have arrived at the shipwright in Pompeii, back from Persia; on board are the fine silks and spices that I ordered.

Anagrams

• Taboric, cabrito

Latin

Etymology

Clipping of corbīta nāvis, from *corbītus, from corbis +‎ -ītus.

Pronunciation

• (Classical Latin) IPA^(key): [kɔrˈbiː.ta]
• (modern Italianate Ecclesiastical) IPA^(key): [korˈbiː.ta]

Noun

corbīta f (genitive corbītae); first declension

1. a slow-sailing freight ship
   • c. 194 BCE, Plautus, Poenulus 3.1.1–4:

     [Agorastocles] Ita me di ament, tardo amico nihil est quicquam inaequius,
     praesertim homini amanti, qui quidquid agit properat omnia.
     Sicut ego hos duco advocatos, homines spissigradissimos,
     tardiores quam corbitae sunt in tranquillo mari.

     May gods so love me, nothing is more unfair than having a slothful friend, even more so for a man in love, who in doing anything must all expedite. So I lead them, having called them forth, the most slow-paced men of them all, slower than freight ships [corbitae] upon a quiet sea.

   • 68 BCE – 44 BCE, Cicero, Epistulae ad Atticum XVI.vi:

     Sed putabam, cum Regium venissem, fore ut illic ‘δολιχὸν πλόον ὁρμαίνοντες’ cogitaremus, corbitane Patras an actuariolis ad Leucopetras Tarentinorum atque inde Corcyram et, si oneraria, statimne freto an Syracusis. Hac super re scribam ad te Regio.

     (please add an English translation of this quotation)

Declension

First-declension noun.

	singular	plural
nominative	corbīta	corbītae
genitive	corbītae	corbītārum
dative	corbītae	corbītīs
accusative	corbītam	corbītās
ablative	corbītā	corbītīs
vocative	corbīta	corbītae

References

• “corbītus”, in Charlton T. Lewis and Charles Short (1879), A Latin Dictionary, Oxford: Clarendon Press
• “corbīta”, in Gaffiot, Félix (1934), Dictionnaire illustré latin-français, Hachette.