vallum

From Latin vallum. Doublet of wall comes from this word via a Proto-Germanic borrowing from Latin.

• IPA^(key): /ˈvæləm/

• Audio (Southern England):

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vallum (plural vallums or valla)

1. (historical, Ancient Rome) A rampart; a wall, as in a fortification.
2. (anatomy) The eyebrow.

• vallar crown

• “vallum”, in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, Springfield, Mass.: G. & C. Merriam, 1913, →OCLC.

Probably from Proto-Italic *walso, from Proto-Indo-European *uh₂lso-, itself perhaps from Proto-Indo-European *welH- (“to turn, wind, roll”). Compare Ancient Greek ἧλος (hêlos, “nail”).^[1]

• (Classical Latin) IPA^(key): [ˈwal.lũː]
• (modern Italianate Ecclesiastical) IPA^(key): [ˈval.lum]

vallum n (genitive vallī); second declension

1. wall, rampart, entrenchment
   • 27 BCE – 25 BCE, Titus Livius, Ab Urbe Condita 7.13:

     […] ; quamquam de gloria vix dicere ausim, si nos et hostes haud secus quam feminas abditos intra vallum omnibus contumeliis eludunt, et […]

     […] ; though I had as lief not to speak of glory, when the enemy jeers us with much abuse as if women concealing behind walls, and […]

• The nature of the root vowel (văllum or vāllum) is not properly known, though the West Germanic borrowing *wall, with a short vowel, seems to indicate the former. Most dictionaries that specify vowel length in closed syllables, especially those published in the 21st century, do not mark it as long.

Second-declension noun (neuter).

• Italian: vallo
• Old Catalan:
  • Catalan: vall
• Old Galician-Portuguese:
  • Galician: valo
  • Portuguese: valo, vala
• Old Spanish:
  • Spanish: valla
• Sicilian: vaḍḍu
• → Albanian: avulli
• → English: vallum (learned)
• → Czech: val
• → Polish: wał
• → Romanian: val
• → Proto-West Germanic: *wall (see there for further descendants)

See the etymology of the corresponding lemma form.

vallum

1. accusative singular of vallus (“stake”)

• “vallum”, in Charlton T. Lewis and Charles Short (1879), A Latin Dictionary, Oxford: Clarendon Press
• “vallum”, in Charlton T. Lewis (1891), An Elementary Latin Dictionary, New York: Harper & Brothers
• "vallum", 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)
• “vallum”, in Gaffiot, Félix (1934), Dictionnaire illustré latin-français, Hachette.
• Carl Meißner; Henry William Auden (1894), Latin Phrase-Book‎^[1], London: Macmillan and Co.
  • to raise a rampart, earthwork: vallum iacere, exstruere, facere
    
  • (ambiguous) to fortify the camp with a rampart: castra munire vallo (aggere)
    
  • (ambiguous) to keep watch on the rampart: custodias agere in vallo
    
  • (ambiguous) to surround a town with a rampart and fosse: oppidum cingere vallo et fossa
    
• “vallum”, in Harry Thurston Peck, editor (1898), Harper’s Dictionary of Classical Antiquities, New York: Harper & Brothers
• “vallum”, in William Smith et al., editor (1890), A Dictionary of Greek and Roman Antiquities, London: William Wayte. G. E. Marindin