salaputium

Latin

Etymology

Borrowed from Oscan; the breakdown of this otherwise unattested Oscan word would be *sal- (“salt”) +‎ *pū- (“to purify”) +‎ *-t- (root noun suffix for laryngeal-final roots) +‎ *-iom (abstract suffix). The compound is a metaphor for how refined one's own wit ("salt") may be.^[1]

The -a- between the first two elements is regular in Oscan to break up word-medial consonant clusters.

Noun

salapūtium n (genitive salapūtiī or salapūtī); second declension

term of unclear meaning; see usage notes

Usage notes

This word occurs only once within the Latin literature (hapax legomenon) and only in nominative case, as a humorous description of something Catullus's friend Calvus did or is.
Its meaning was obscure already in Roman times, with Seneca the Elder interpreting the term as referring to Calvus's own short stature. See Weiss (1996) for etymology and interpretations.

Declension

Second-declension noun (neuter).

Case	Singular	Plural
Nominative	salapūtium	salapūtia
Genitive	salapūtiī salapūtī¹	salapūtiōrum
Dative	salapūtiō	salapūtiīs
Accusative	salapūtium	salapūtia
Ablative	salapūtiō	salapūtiīs
Vocative	salapūtium	salapūtia

¹Found in older Latin (until the Augustan Age).

References

^ Weiss, Michael (1996) “An Oscanism in Catullus 53”, in Classical Philology, volume 91, number 4, University of Chicago Press, →DOI, →ISSN, pages 353–359