facundus

Etymology

From for (“to speak”) +‎ -cundus. Ultimately from Proto-Indo-European *bʰeh₂- (“to speak”).

Pronunciation

• (Classical Latin) IPA^(key): /faːˈkun.dus/, [fäːˈkʊn̪d̪ʊs̠]
• (modern Italianate Ecclesiastical) IPA^(key): /faˈkun.dus/, [fäˈkun̪d̪us]

Adjective

fācundus (feminine fācunda, neuter fācundum); first/second-declension adjective

1. eloquent, fluent, that speaks with ease
   • 8 CE, Ovid, Fasti 3.101–102:

     nōndum trādiderat victās victōribus artēs
     Graecia, fācundum sed male forte genus

     Not yet had the vanquished arts been handed over to the victors –
     Greece: an eloquent but not very brave people.
     (Ovid, whose own Metamorphoses appropriated Greek myth and poetic tradition, acknowledges an artistic debt with faint praise – and an insult!)

References

• “facundus”, in Charlton T. Lewis and Charles Short (1879) A Latin Dictionary, Oxford: Clarendon Press
• “facundus”, in Charlton T. Lewis (1891) An Elementary Latin Dictionary, New York: Harper & Brothers
• facundus in Gaffiot, Félix (1934) Dictionnaire illustré latin-français, Hachette.
• “facundus”, in William Smith, editor (1848), A Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology, London: John Murray
• Morwood, James. A Latin Grammar. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999.