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LATIN · A WORD WITH POSSIBILITIES

bos.

ox; bull; cow; ox-ray; cattle (pl.); (ox-like animals); [luca ~ => elephant];

3 characters1 syllables approx.Latina language

Meaning & usage

noun[ˈboːs]Classical-Latin[ˈbɔs]
  1. head of cattle (cow, bull, steer, or ox)

    declension-3 · irregular
Where this word comes from

Irregular, for the expected **vōs/**ūs, accusative **vom, oblique stem **vov-, from Proto-Italic *gʷōs, from Proto-Indo-European *gʷṓws, which also gave Ancient Greek βοῦς (boûs), Sanskrit गो (go) (nominative singular gaúḥ), and English cow. Most likely a borrowing from a Osco-Umbrian language, attested as Umbrian bum (acc.sg.), bue (abl.sg.), buo (gen.pl.), buf (acc.pl.) all spelling /bō-/. This was likely motivated by the fact that the expected form would have produced an undesirable homonymic clash with vōs (“you”) in the nominative and with ovis (“sheep”) in the oblique. It's unclear whether the borrowing included the entire paradigm, or just the initial consonant.

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Definitions, grammatical labels, IPA, etymology and examples: Wiktionary contributors, extracted by Kaikki / Wiktextract. Adapted under CC BY-SA 4.0. Selected fields and authored examples are shown; third-party quotations and audio are omitted. See contributor history.

Last enriched 2026-09-10. Definitions are in English. Romanizations are shown when supplied by the source; syllable estimates are omitted for unsupported scripts.