duellum – Latin noun declension

Noun: duellum
Hyphenation:

Gender: Neuter Declension: Second

Nominative

Singular	duellum
Plural	duella

Genitive

Singular	duellī
Plural	duellōrum

Dative

Singular	duellō
Plural	duellīs

Accusative

Singular	duellum
Plural	duella

Ablative

Singular	duellō
Plural	duellīs

Vocative

Singular	duellum
Plural	duella

Sample Sentences

Abeo. Valete, iudices iustissimi / domi duellique duellatores optumi. (Translation by Henry Thomas Riley

Fare ye well, at home, most upright judges, and in warfare most valiant combatants.) [c. 200 BCE – 190 BCE, Plautus, Captivi prologus.0.67–68 (iambic senarius)]
Victores victis hostibus legiones reveniunt domum, (Victorious, the enemy vanquished, our legions are returning home,

with a mighty war brought to an end and all the enemy slain.) [c. 190 BCE – 185 BCE, Plautus, Amphitruo 1.1.188–189 (iambic octonarius)]
Mors et vita duello conflixere mirando. (Death and life have contended in a marvelous combat.)

Nouns inflected like duellum

palmētum, miliardum, rēctangulum, bactērium, frūctum, melimēlum, scītum, scūtum, lanthanum, sertum, sacrum, pentaptōtum, dēcrēmentum, sorbum, fundibulum, alphabētum, siglum, signum, flābrum, nūtrīmentum, etc. (List truncated at 20 nouns)

Etymology

1. Etymology tree
2. Proto-Indo-European *dewh₂-der.?
3. Proto-Italic *dwenos
4. Old Latin duenos
5. Old Latin *duenelos?
6. Latin duellum
7. De Vaan 2008 favors Pinault 1987's proposed derivation from *duenelos, a diminutive of duenos, itself an earlier form of bonus (“good, brave”). Perhaps the sense of "brave" allowed for the term to become a euphemism for wartime deeds, facilitating an eventual generalization to the overall concept of war. Sihler explains the retention of -e- here as an effect of the following l exilis, arguing that *dwe- normally became *dwo- > bo- (compare duenos > bonus). Pokorny instead connected the word to terms such as Ancient Greek δαίω (daíō), which is now often derived from *deh₂w- (“to burn”).
8. By a regular sound change (seen already in Plautus), dw- evolved in Latin to b-: this turned duellum into bellum, the usual form used for the sense "war". However, the archaic form duellum survived in poetry. In Medieval Latin, the sense shifted to a combat between, specifically, two contenders, under the influence of the (non-cognate) word duo (“two”).

Verbs referencing "duellum"

Danish Nouns duel, Dutch Nouns duel, Romanian Nouns duel, Italian Nouns duello, German Nouns Duell, Norwegian Bokmål Nouns duell, Norwegian Nynorsk Nouns duell, Swedish Nouns duell.