lanugo

English

Etymology

Borrowed from Latin lānūgō.

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /ləˈnjuːɡəʊ/

  • Audio (Southern England):

    (file)

Noun

lanugo (countable and uncountable, plural lanugos)

1. Soft down or fine hair, specifically that covering the human foetus or a tumorous area.
   • 1874, Charles Darwin, “Chaper XX”, in The Descent of Man:

     From the presence of the woolly hair or lanugo on the human fœtus, and of rudimentary hairs scattered over the body during maturity, we may infer that man is descended from some animal which was born hairy and remained so during life.

   • 1955, Vladimir Nabokov, Lolita:

     […] early spring mountains with young-elephant lanugo along their spines […]

Translations

soft down or fine hair

• Catalan: lanugen m
• Chinese:

  Mandarin: 胎毛 (zh) (tāimáo), 胎髮／胎发 (zh) (tāifà), 奶毛 (zh) (nǎimáo)

• Finnish: untuvakarva, lanugo (fi)
• French: lanugo (fr) m
• German: Lanugo f
• Indonesian: lanugo (id)
• Italian: lanugo (it) m, lanugine (it) f
• Polish: lanugo n
• Spanish: lanugo (es) m
• Welsh: goflew m pl

Further reading

• lanugo on Wikipedia.Wikipedia
• lanugo (Q1540378)

Anagrams

• Angulo, Lugano

Esperanto

Etymology

Borrowed from Latin lānūgō.

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): [laˈnuɡo]

• Audio:

  (file)

• Rhymes: -uɡo
• Hyphenation: la‧nu‧go

Noun

lanugo (uncountable, accusative lanugon)

1. down
2. fluff

Italian

Etymology

Borrowed from Latin lānūgō, derived from lāna (“wool”).

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /laˈnu.ɡo/
• Rhymes: -uɡo
• Hyphenation: la‧nù‧go

Noun

lanugo f (uncountable)

1. (biology) lanugo

   Synonym: lanugine

Further reading

• lanugo in Treccani.it – Vocabolario Treccani on line, Istituto dell'Enciclopedia Italiana

Anagrams

• Lugano, a lungo, languo, nugola

Latin

Etymology

lāna (“wool”) +‎ -ūgō

Pronunciation

• (Classical Latin) IPA^(key): /laːˈnuː.ɡoː/, [ɫ̪äːˈnuːɡoː]
• (modern Italianate Ecclesiastical) IPA^(key): /laˈnu.ɡo/, [läˈnuːɡo]

Noun

lānūgō f (genitive lānūginis); third declension

1. (in the poetry of every age and in post-Augustan prose) woolly substance, the down of plants, of youthful cheeks, etc.
2. (transferred sense) sawdust

Declension

Third-declension noun.

Case	Singular	Plural
Nominative	lānūgō	lānūginēs
Genitive	lānūginis	lānūginum
Dative	lānūginī	lānūginibus
Accusative	lānūginem	lānūginēs
Ablative	lānūgine	lānūginibus
Vocative	lānūgō	lānūginēs

Synonyms

• (sawdust): scobis

Derived terms

• lānūgināns
• lānūgineus
• lānūginō
• lānūginōsus

Descendants

• → English: lanugo
• → Esperanto: lanugo
• → Italian: lanugine
• → Polish: lanugo
• → Spanish: lanugo

References

• “lānūgo”, in Charlton T. Lewis and Charles Short (1879) A Latin Dictionary, Oxford: Clarendon Press
• lānūgo in Gaffiot, Félix (1934) Dictionnaire illustré latin-français, Hachette, page 886/2.
• “lānūgō” on page 1,000/3 of the Oxford Latin Dictionary (1st ed., 1968–82)

Polish

lanugo

Etymology

Learned borrowing from Latin lānūgō. Doublet of flanela and wełna.

Noun

lanugo n (indeclinable)

1. (anatomy) lanugo

Further reading

• lanugo in Polish dictionaries at PWN

Romanian

Etymology

Borrowed from Latin [Term?] or French lanugo.

Noun

lanugo n (uncountable)

1. lanugo

Declension

declension of lanugo (singular only)

	singular
n gender	indefinite articulation	definite articulation
nominative/accusative	(un) lanugo	lanugoul
genitive/dative	(unui) lanugo	lanugoului
vocative	lanugoule

Spanish

Etymology

Borrowed from Latin lānūgō.

Noun

lanugo m (uncountable)

1. lanugo

Further reading

• “lanugo”, in Diccionario de la lengua española, Vigésima tercera edición, Real Academia Española, 2014