basium

Probably borrowed from Celtic, from an expressive root such as Proto-Indo-European *bu-.

Compare Middle Irish pusóc (“kiss”), English buss, French bisou, German Buss (“kiss”), Polish buzia, buziak (“kiss”), Lithuanian bučiúoti (“to kiss”), Albanian buzë (“lip”), Romanian buze (“lips”), and Persian بوس (bus, “kiss”).^[1]

• (Classical Latin) IPA^(key): [ˈbaː.si.ũː]
• (modern Italianate Ecclesiastical) IPA^(key): [ˈbaː.s̬i.um]

bāsium n (genitive bāsiī or bāsī); second declension

1. kiss, especially of the hand
   • 15 BCE – 45 CE, Phaedrus, Fabularum Aesopiarum Libri Quinque 5.7.28:

     Iactat basia tibicen.

     The flautist blows kisses.

2. (poetic) kiss of the lips (esp. used this way in Catullus and Martial)

   Synonyms: ōsculum, suāvium

   • c. 84 BCE – 54 BCE, Catullus, Carmina 5.7:

     dā mī bāsia mīlle, deinde centum

     Give me a thousand kisses, then a hundred

   • c. 84 BCE – 54 BCE, Catullus, Carmina 7.9:

     tam tē bāsia multa bāsiāre

     For you to kiss so many kisses

Second-declension noun (neuter).

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

• bāsiō

• “basium”, in Charlton T. Lewis and Charles Short (1879), A Latin Dictionary, Oxford: Clarendon Press
• “basium”, in Charlton T. Lewis (1891), An Elementary Latin Dictionary, New York: Harper & Brothers
• “basium”, in Gaffiot, Félix (1934), Dictionnaire illustré latin-français, Hachette.
• Pokorny *bu