basium

Probably borrowed from Celtic, from an expressive root such as Proto-Indo-European *bu-. Compare Middle Irish pusóc (“kiss”), English buss, German Buss (“kiss”), Polish buzia, buziak (“kiss”), Lithuanian bučiúoti (“to kiss”), Albanian buzë (“lip”), and Persian بوس (bus, “kiss”).^[1]

• (Classical Latin) IPA^(key): /ˈbaː.si.um/, [ˈbäːs̠iʊ̃ˑ]
• (modern Italianate Ecclesiastical) IPA^(key): /ˈba.si.um/, [ˈbäːs̬ium]

bāsium n (genitive bāsiī or bāsī); second declension

1. kiss, especially of the hand
   • 15 BCE – 45 CE, Phaedrus, Fabularum Aesopiarum Libri Quinque 5.7.28:

     Iactat basia tibicen.

     . The flautist blows kisses.

2. (poetic) kiss of the lips (esp. used this way in Catullus and Martial)
   • 84 BCE – 54 BCE, Catullus 5.7:

     da mi basia mille, deinde centum,

     Give me a thousand kisses, then a hundred,

Second-declension noun (neuter).

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

• (kiss): ōsculum, suāvium

• bāsiō

• “basium”, in Charlton T. Lewis and Charles Short (1879) A Latin Dictionary, Oxford: Clarendon Press
• “basium”, in Charlton T. Lewis (1891) An Elementary Latin Dictionary, New York: Harper & Brothers
• basium in Gaffiot, Félix (1934) Dictionnaire illustré latin-français, Hachette.
• Pokorny *bu