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murcus

Pronunciation: [ˈmʊr.kʊs]

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

noun

  1. shortened, mutilated
  2. a coward, who, to escape military service, cuts off his thumb

Etymology

Uncertain. The term is perhaps connected with marceō (“to be soaked”), itself from Proto-Indo-European *merk-. However, according to the linguist Nicholas Zair, it is most likely that the Latin verb showcases a development of Proto-Indo-European *mr̥k- to Proto-Italic *mork-, which then unrounded to *ma-. If this is accepted, then—according to Zair—the form murcus cannot be directly derived from…

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