fucus

• fukes

From New Latin Fūcus, from Ancient Greek φῦκος (phûkos).

• IPA^(key): /ˈfjuː.kəs/

• Audio (Southern England):

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fucus (plural fuci or fucuses)

1. Any alga of the genus Fucus.
   • a. 1813, Sir Humphry Davy, "Lecture VI" in Elements of Agricultural Chemistry (1840 reprint):

     Sea-weeds, consisting of different species of fuci, algæ, and confervæ, are much used as a manure on the sea-coasts of Britain and Ireland.

   • 1853, John Ruskin, “Torcello”, in The Stones of Venice, volume II (The Sea-Stories), London: Smith, Elder, and Co., […], →OCLC, § I, page 11:

     One of the feeblest of these inlets, after winding for some time among buried fragments of masonry, and knots of sunburnt weeds whitened with webs of fucus, stays itself in an utterly stagnant pool beside a plot of greener grass covered with ground ivy and violets.

2. (cosmetics, obsolete) A skin cosmetic, a wash or colouring for the skin. [17th c.]
   • 1603 (first performance), Ben[jamin] Jonson, Seianus His Fall, London: […] G[eorge] Elld, for Thomas Thorpe, published 1605, →OCLC, Act II:

     And to morrowe morning, ¶ I’le ſend you a perfume, firſt to reſolue ¶ And procure ſweat, and then prepare a Bath ¶ To clenſe, and cleare the Cutis; againſt when, ¶ I’le haue an excellent new Fucus made, ¶ Reſiſtiue 'gainſt the ſunne, the raine, or wind, ¶ Which you ſhall lay on with a breath, or oyle, ¶ As you beſt like, and laſt ſome fourteen howres, […]

3. (figurative, obsolete) A veil, pretense, mask; an artifice, deception.
4. (obsolete) Any dye or colouring.

From New Latin Fucus, sometimes spelled as phucus..

• IPA^(key): /fy.kys/

• Audio (France (Lyon)):

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• Audio (France (Somain)):

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fucus m (invariable)

1. fucus
   • 1857, Gustave Flaubert, Madame Bovary […]‎^[1], Paris: Michel Lévy Frères:

     Il eût cité du chinois et du groenlandais, s'il eût connu ces deux langues; car il se trouvait dans une de ces crises où l'âme entière montre indistinctement ce qu'elle enferme, comme l'Océan, qui, dans les tempêtes, s'entrouvre depuis les fucus de son rivage jusqu'au sable de ses abîmes.

     (please add an English translation of this quotation)

2. kelp

• goémon
• varech

• “fucus”, in Trésor de la langue française informatisé [Digitized Treasury of the French Language], 2012

• (Classical Latin) IPA^(key): [ˈfuː.kʊs]
• (modern Italianate Ecclesiastical) IPA^(key): [ˈfuː.kus]

From Ancient Greek φῦκος (phûkos, “seaweed, orchil”).

fūcus m (genitive fūcī); second declension

1. seaweed; orchil, orchella weed, Roccella tinctoria
2. red dye derived from it; (in general) dyestuff
3. (as cosmetic) rouge
4. (transf.) coloring
5. (poetic) the reddish bee glue, propolis
   • c. 37 BCE – 30 BCE, Virgil, Georgics 4.38–40:

     (apēs) in tēctīs certātim tenvia cērā/spīrāmenta linunt fūcōque et flōribus ōrās/explent

     in their homes they (the bees) eagerly smear the passages with wax, fill the entrances with bee glue and nectar

6. pretence, disguise, sham

   fūcum facere

   to play a trick

7. artificial embellishment of literary style

Second-declension noun.

• fūcō

• → Proto-Brythonic: *fʉg
  • Cornish: fug
  • Middle Welsh: ffuc
    • Welsh: ffug

From Proto-Italic *foikos, from Proto-Indo-European *bʰoy-ko-s, from *bʰey-.^[1] Cognate with Old Irish bech, English bee, and possibly Ancient Greek σφήξ (sphḗx, “wasp”). Sense two is a Semantic loan from English drone.

fūcus m (genitive fūcī); second declension

1. male bee, drone
   • c. 37 BCE – 30 BCE, Virgil, Georgics 2.244:

     immunisque sedens aliena ad pabula fucus

     (please add an English translation of this quotation)

   Synonym: cēphēnes m pl (Grecian)

2. (Contemporary Latin) unmanned aircraft drone
   • 2025 September 21, Lydia Ariminensis, “Aëromobiles a Russia in caelum alienum evolaverunt”, in Ephemeris‎^[2]:

     Priore hebdomada XIX “fuci” Poloniam petierunt, aliquot a finitima Bielorussia: partim ceciderunt, partim deiecti sunt ab aëronavibus Natonis.

     Last week, nineteen drones entered Poland, several of which from neighbouring Belarus: some hit, others were intercepted by NATO aircraft.

Second-declension noun.

• Italian: fuco

• “fucus”, in Charlton T. Lewis and Charles Short (1879), A Latin Dictionary, Oxford: Clarendon Press
• “fucus”, in Charlton T. Lewis (1891), An Elementary Latin Dictionary, New York: Harper & Brothers
• "fucus", in Charles du Fresne du Cange, Glossarium Mediæ et Infimæ Latinitatis (augmented edition with additions by D. P. Carpenterius, Adelungius and others, edited by Léopold Favre, 1883–1887)
• “fucus”, in Gaffiot, Félix (1934), Dictionnaire illustré latin-français, Hachette.
• “fucus”, in Harry Thurston Peck, editor (1898), Harper’s Dictionary of Classical Antiquities, New York: Harper & Brothers
• “fucus”, in William Smith et al., editor (1890), A Dictionary of Greek and Roman Antiquities, London: William Wayte. G. E. Marindin