flagitium

Latin

Etymology

From flāgitō (“demand, press”) +‎ -ium.

Pronunciation

• (Classical Latin) IPA^(key): [fɫaːˈɡɪ.ti.ũː]
• (modern Italianate Ecclesiastical) IPA^(key): [flaˈd͡ʒit.t͡si.um]

Noun

flāgitium n (genitive flāgitiī or flāgitī); second declension

1. disgraceful or shameful action, deed, or crime; scandal

   Synonyms: maleficium, crīmen, culpa, vitium, facinus, scelus

   • c. 100-110, Tacitus, Histories: Book 4‎:

     Obsessos hinc fides, inde egestas inter decus ac flagitium distrahebant.

     The ties of loyalty on the one hand, and the necessities of famine on the other, kept the besieged wavering between the alternatives of glory and infamy.

   • 63 BCE, Cicero, Catiline Orations Oratio in Catilinam Prima in Senatu Habita.13:

     Quae libīdō ab oculīs, quod facinus ā manibus umquam tuīs, quod flāgitium ā tōtō corpore āfuit?

     What lust was ever absent from your eyes, what crime from your hands, what shameful act from your whole body?

2. shame, disgrace, outrage

Declension

Second-declension noun (neuter).

	singular	plural
nominative	flāgitium	flāgitia
genitive	flāgitiī flāgitī1	flāgitiōrum
dative	flāgitiō	flāgitiīs
accusative	flāgitium	flāgitia
ablative	flāgitiō	flāgitiīs
vocative	flāgitium	flāgitia

¹Found in older Latin (until the Augustan Age).

Derived terms

• flāgitiōsus

Descendants

• Portuguese: flagício

References

• “flagitium”, in Charlton T. Lewis and Charles Short (1879), A Latin Dictionary, Oxford: Clarendon Press
• “flagitium”, in Charlton T. Lewis (1891), An Elementary Latin Dictionary, New York: Harper & Brothers
• “flagitium”, in Gaffiot, Félix (1934), Dictionnaire illustré latin-français, Hachette.
• Carl Meißner; Henry William Auden (1894), Latin Phrase-Book‎, London: Macmillan and Co.
  • a life defiled by every crime: vita omnibus flagitiis, vitiis dedita
    
  • a life defiled by every crime: vita omnibus flagitiis inquinata