ballux

Latin

Alternative forms

• balūx

Etymology

Borrowed from a pre-Roman substrate of Iberia, cognate with Galician baluga. Doublet of ballūca.

Pronunciation

• (Classical Latin) IPA^(key): /ˈbal.luːks/, [ˈbälːʲuːks̠]
• (modern Italianate Ecclesiastical) IPA^(key): /ˈbal.luks/, [ˈbälːuks]

Noun

ballūx f (genitive ballūcis); third declension

1. gold sand, gold dust
   • c. 77 CE – 79 CE, Pliny the Elder, Naturalis Historia 33.21
   • 86 CE – 103 CE, Martial, Epigrammata 12.57.9

Inflection

Third-declension noun.

Case	Singular	Plural
Nominative	ballūx	ballūcēs
Genitive	ballūcis	ballūcum
Dative	ballūcī	ballūcibus
Accusative	ballūcem	ballūcēs
Ablative	ballūce	ballūcibus
Vocative	ballūx	ballūcēs

References

• “ballux”, in Charlton T. Lewis and Charles Short (1879) A Latin Dictionary, Oxford: Clarendon Press
• ballux in Gaffiot, Félix (1934) Dictionnaire illustré latin-français, Hachette.
• “ballux” in volume 2, column 1703, line 10 in the Thesaurus Linguae Latinae (TLL Open Access), Berlin (formerly Leipzig): De Gruyter (formerly Teubner), 1900–present
• John F. Healy (1999) Pliny the Elder on Science and Technology‎^[1], Oxford University Press, →ISBN, retrieved 27 August 2018, pages 91–92