BOOK XI.

something, and we know: whence on the contrary those who are unaware and unrefined are called ignari ignorant. For the ancients used to say that to have smelled was to have known. Terence: "And had I not smelled it six whole months before he began anything?"
Adelphi 3. 3. 43.

48. The straight part of the nostrils, because it is extended equally in length and roundness, is called the columna column; its extremity is the pirula little pear, from the shape of the pear fruit. Those which are on the right and left are pinnulae little wings from their similarity to wings, and the middle part is the interfinium partition.

49. Os mouth is so named because through it, as if through a doorway ostium, we send food inside and throw out spit: or because food enters from there, and words exit from there.

50. Labia lips are named from lambere to lick. That which is upper we call the labium, and that which is lower, because it is thicker, the labrum. Others call the lips of men labra, and those of women labia.

51. Varro thinks the name linguae tongues was imposed from ligando binding food. Others [think it is] because it binds words through articulated sounds. For just as a plectrum to strings, so the tongue is struck against the teeth, and makes a vocal sound.

52. The Greeks call dentes teeth odontas, and from there they seem to draw the Latin name. The first of these are called praecisores incisors, because they cut first everything that is taken in. The following are called canini canine teeth, two of which are in the right jaw, and two in the left. And they are called canini because they exist in the likeness of dogs' [teeth], and a dog breaks bones with them,

48. Pirula. The Greeks call this sphairion, the pinnulae pterygia, and the interfinium isthmon. Arnobius called this same interfinium an imbrix. Lactantius seems to have wanted a partition when he said: "He intercepted and divided [it] as if with a wall drawn through the middle."
49. "Or because food enters from there." Thus in the Gospel, "because he was about to pass through there." But it is also allowed to read illuc or illac from the Tarraconia books.
50. "Others [say] lips of men labra." Whom Servius rebukes in [the poem] Corydon.
Ib. Others say the opposite, that the upper is called labrum, and the lower labium. In prose, labrum is used more frequently than labium. In a very ancient Toledo codex, this note is added to the margin: "Granon [hair] on the lips."
51. "From binding food" Lactantius: "Therefore Varro thinks the name of the tongue was imposed from binding food."
Ib. "Just as a plectrum." From Jerome in the Epitaph of Paula.
Ib. Isaeus in notes to Lactantius, book 10 on the Workmanship of God, attributes to Isidore that he reports from Varro "from licking food," because clearly he had not seen Grial's edition, but others, in which it is "from licking food." The tongue is compared to a plectrum by Avitus, book 1, v. 88.
52. Colomellos. And Varro 2 on farming says they are called columellares.
Ib. Colomellos: Spaniards now call them colmillos. Ugutio, Papias, and others took the explanation and name from Isidore; but others write columellos, others columnellos.