cavernosus

From caverna (“a hollow, cave, cavity”) + -ōsus (“-ous, -ose”, adjectival suffix).

• (Classical Latin) IPA^(key): [ka.wɛrˈnoː.sʊs]
• (modern Italianate Ecclesiastical) IPA^(key): [ka.verˈnɔː.s̬us]

cavernōsus (feminine cavernōsa, neuter cavernōsum); first/second-declension adjective

1. full of hollows or cavities; cavernous
   • 77 AD, Pliny the Elder, Natural History‎^[1], section 26.30:

     polypodī, quam nostrī filiculam vocant, similis filicī, rādīx in ūsū, pilōsa, colōris intus herbāceī, crassitūdine digitī minimī, acētābulīs cavernōsa ceu polypōrum cirrī, subdulcis, in petrīs nāscens aut sub arboribus vetustīs.

     The polypodium, which we call the little fern, is similar to the fern; its root is in use, [which is] hairy, colored like grass inside, as thick as the little finger, covered with cavities in the form of round indentations like those of the octopus's tentacle, somewhat sweet, [and] grows on rocks or at the foot of old trees.

   • c. 400, Prudentius, Hamartigenia, lines 316-20:

     num propter lyricae modulāmina vāna puellae
     nervōrumque sonōs et convīvāle calentis
     carmen nēquitiae patulās Deus addidit aurēs
     perque cavernōsōs iussit penetrāre meātūs
     vōcis iter?

     Surely it was not for the sake of the idle melodies of a girl with a lyre, the sounds of the strings and the festive song of aroused wickedness, that God gave [us] open ears and commanded the path of the voice to enter them by hollow channels?

First/second-declension adjective.

• → Italian: cavernoso
• → Old French: caverneux
  • French: caverneux
    • → Romanian: cavernos
  • → Middle English: cavernous
    • English: cavernous
• → Portuguese: cavernoso
• → Spanish: cavernoso

• “cavernosus”, in Charlton T. Lewis and Charles Short (1879), A Latin Dictionary, Oxford: Clarendon Press
• "cavernosus", 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)
• “cavernosus”, in Gaffiot, Félix (1934), Dictionnaire illustré latin-français, Hachette.