clavicula

Unadapted borrowing from New Latin clāvicula (“the collarbone”), diminutive of clāvis (“a key”).

• (General American) IPA^(key): /kləˈvɪk.jəl.ə/, /klæˈvɪk.jəl.ə/
• Rhymes: -ɪkjʊlə

clavicula (plural claviculae or (archaic) claviculæ)

1. (anatomy) Alternative form of clavicle.

• clavicular
• claviculate

• “clavicula”, in Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary, Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster, 1996–present.

From clāvis (“a key”) +‎ -cula (diminutive nominal suffix).

• (Classical Latin) IPA^(key): [kɫaːˈwɪ.kʊ.ɫa]
• (modern Italianate Ecclesiastical) IPA^(key): [klaˈviː.ku.la]

clāvicula f (genitive clāviculae); first declension

1. diminutive of clāvis (“key”)
   • Germanicus Caesar, Aratea 198, (authorship disputed):

     Quālīs ferrātōs sŭbĭcit clāvīcŭlă dentes, / Succutit et foribus praeducti vincula claustri, / Talis disposita est stellis.

     (please add an English translation of this quotation)

2. (botany) the tendril of a vine
   • 106 BCE – 43 BCE, Cicero, Cato Maior de Senectute 15.52:

     Vītis quidem, quae nātūra cadūca est et, nisi fūlta est, fertur ad terram, eadem, ut sē ērigat clāviculīs suīs quasi manibus quicquid est nacta, complectitur […] .

     Indeed the vine, which is naturally prone to falling and is trailed along the ground unless supported, nonetheless embraces whatever it catches hold of with [its] tendrils — as if they were hands — in order to raise itself up.
     (Cicero first used the example to describe one of the fascinations of an elderly farmer.)

   • 45 BCE, Cicero, De Natura Deorum 2.120:

     Iam vērō vītēs sīc clāviculīs adminicula tamquam manibus adprehendunt atque ita sē ērigunt ut animantēs […] .

     The vines we see take hold on props with [their] tendrils, as if with hands, and raise themselves as if they were animated.
     (Cicero used the example again, and similarly worded, to describe the life-force in nature.)

3. a bar or bolt of a door
4. a pivot
5. (New Latin, anatomy) the clavicle, collar bone

First-declension noun.

• clāviculārius

• clāvicārius
• clāviger

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