amasius

From the Latin amāsius (“a lover”).

amasius (plural amasii)

1. (rare, literary) One’s beloved; a lover.
   • 1607?, Edward Topsell, The Hiſtory of Four-footed Beaſts and Serpents (1658), “Of the Lion”, page 369:

     Ovid hath a witty fiction of one Phyllius, who fell ſo deeply in love with a little boy, that at his pleaſure he took many wilde Beaſts, Birds, and Lions, and tamed them to the delight of his Amaſius: at length the inſatiable Boy required him to do the like by a Bull, which he had overcome, but Phyllius denying that requeſt, the Boy preſently caſt himſelf down from a Rock, and was afterward turned into a Swan.

• amusias

• amāsiō

From amō (“to love”), perhaps suffixed with -āsius, dialectal unrhotacized variant of -ārius, from Proto-Italic *-āsios;^[1] its post-classical variant amāsiō is secondary. Alternatively, it could be from Old Latin amāscō (“to start loving”).^[2][3]

• (Classical Latin) IPA^(key): [aˈmaː.si.ʊs]
• (modern Italianate Ecclesiastical) IPA^(key): [aˈmaː.s̬i.us]

amāsius m (genitive amāsiī or amāsī, feminine amāsia); second declension

1. (pre-classical and post-classical, rare) a male lover

   Synonym: amātor

   • c. 189 BCE, Plautus, Truculentus 3.1.14–15:

     nunc ego istos mundulos urbanos amasios
     hoc ictu exponam atque omnis eiciam foras

     Now those finicky town bed-hoppers
     with this one stroke shall I send adrift and toss them all outside

   • c. 177 CE, Aulus Gellius, Noctes Atticae 6.8.1:

     Delphinos venerios esse et amasios non modo historiae veteres, sed recentes quoque memoriae declarant.

     That dolphins are affectionate and amorous is shown, not only by ancient history, but also by tales of recent date.

Second-declension noun.

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

• Italian: amasio
• → English: amasius
• Portuguese: amásio

• “ămāsĭus”, in Charlton T. Lewis and Charles Short (1879), A Latin Dictionary, Oxford: Clarendon Press
• “ămāsĭus”, in Gaffiot, Félix (1934), Dictionnaire illustré latin-français, Hachette, page 109/2.
• “amāsius” on page 113/1 of the Oxford Latin Dictionary (1st ed., 1968–82)