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LATIN · A WORD WITH POSSIBILITIES

festuca.

straw; stalk (used in manumission); ram for beating down earth, piledriver;

7 characters3 syllables approx.Latina language

Meaning & usage

noun[fɛsˈtuː.ka]Classical-Latin[fesˈtuː.ka]
  1. straw

    declension-1
  2. stalk, stem

    declension-1
  3. rod used to touch slaves in ceremonial manumission

    declension-1
  4. ram, piledriver (often spelt fistūca in this sense)

    declension-1
  5. rod as a symbol of legal authority

    Medieval-Latin · declension-1
Where this word comes from

Perhaps connected to ferula, with a common earlier stem *fes-. De Vaan notes if suffixation is with -ūcus as in several plant names: sambūcus (“elderberry”), albūcus (“asphodel; asphodel bulb”), lactūca (“lettuce”), the stem could be *festo-. According to Etimo, possibly ultimately from Proto-Indo-European *bʰers- (“peak, tip, pointed, bristle”), similar to fastigium (“summit, peak, sharp point”). Gaffiot numbers the sense of ram, piledriver, usually spelt fistūca, a separate word, but it is offered as an alternative spelling in De Vaan. Also compare fistula (“pipe, tube”).

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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.