boa

“boa” is a Latin word. Its 2 meanings in English:

noun

A large snake native to Roman Italy.
A disease, the measles or smallpox.

Etymology

First mentioned by Pliny. From Proto-Italic *gʷouā (with the b- due to a Sabellic intermediary), from Proto-Indo-European *gʷówyeh₂, a derivative of *gʷówyos (“pertaining to cows”). The semantic derivation stems from folk beliefs that snakes could drink cow milk; such folklore also underlies Serbo-Croatian guja and kravosas, the former being an exact cognate to the Latin word.

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More Latin words

blondinus
blondus
Blossi
Blossius
boamini
boarius
boatio
boatus

About this dictionary

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Definitions are from Wiktionary, extracted by Kaikki.org, and are available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.