obex

English

Etymology

From Latin obex (“barrier, wall”).

Pronunciation

• (Received Pronunciation) IPA^(key): /ˈəʊ.bɛks/

  • Audio (Southern England):

    (file)

• (General American) IPA^(key): /ˈoʊˌbɛks/

Noun

obex (plural obices)

1. (anatomy) A small, crescentic fold of white matter that covers the inferior angle of the floor of the fourth ventricle.

References

• “obex”, in Lexico, Dictionary.com; Oxford University Press, 2019–2022.
• “obex”, in Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary, Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster, 1996–present.

Latin

Etymology

From obiciō (“to throw or put before or towards”).

Pronunciation

• (Classical Latin) IPA^(key): /ˈoː.beks/, [ˈoːbɛks̠] or IPA^(key): /ˈo.beks/, [ˈɔbɛks̠]
• (modern Italianate Ecclesiastical) IPA^(key): /ˈo.beks/, [ˈɔːbeks]

In Classical Latin, the forms of this word built on the oblique stem obic- may have originally been pronounced with an unwritten /j/ sound, making the first syllable of the word /ob/ (which contains the short vowel /o/ and scans as a heavy syllable because of the coda consonant /b/). For example, in Attic Nights 4.17, Aulus Gellius indicates that the learned grammarian Sulpicius Apollinaris read obicibus with a short o and a doubled ("gemina") letter i where it occurs in Vergil's Georgics with heavy-light-light-heavy scansion; this implies a pronunciation /ob.ji.ki.bus/. The same situation of a single letter I potentially representing a sequence of the consonant /j/ and short vowel /i/ is found with the verb obiciō and a number of other prefixed verbs derived from iaciō.

Gellius criticizes as ignorant those who pronounce obiciēbat and subices with long vowels (i.e. /oː/ and /uː/) for the sake of the meter, a comment which implies that pronunciations with /ob.ji/ and /sub.ji/ were not universally used for derivatives of iacio during the second century, and may have been simplified in normal speech to /o.bi/ and /su.bi/ for many speakers of that time.

There is less evidence about the Classical Latin pronunciation of the nominative singular form obex as the word was rarely used in this form. It appears scanned as ōbex in the late poets Sidonius Apollinaris and Avitus of Vienne, who may have had in mind the pronunciation that Gellius proscribes.

Noun

ō̆bex m or f (genitive ō̆bicis); third declension

1. (literal) a bolt, bar; a barrier, wall
   • c. 37 BCE – 30 BCE, Virgil, Georgics 2.1:

     unde tremor terris, qua vi maria alta tumescant
     obicibus ruptis rursus que in se ipsa residant

   • c. 430 CE – c. 489 CE, Sidonius Apollinaris, carmina 2.492:

     proferat hic veterum thalamos discrimine partos
     Graecia, ni pudor est: reparatis Pisa quadrigis
     suscitet Oenomaum, natae quem fraude cadentem
     cerea destituit resolutis axibus obex

     • 1936 translation by W. B. Anderson

       Here let Greece bring forward, unless she be ashamed, those marriages of her ancients which were won by peril. Let Pisa bring back her four-horse chariot and revive Oenomaus, who fell by a daughter’s guile, when the waxen linch-pins betrayed him, unloosing the axles

   • c. 490 CE – 517 CE, Avitus Viennensis, Poematum de Mosaicae historiae gestis 1.281:

     Fit fluvius pereunte lacu: tum redditur alveo
     Pristina riparum conclusis fluctibus obex,
     Donec dividuum spargens per devia finem
     Gurgite septeno patulum percurrat in aequor.

     • 1997 translation by George W. Shea

       As the lake it formed disappears, it becomes once more a river. Then the ancient barrier of its banks is restored to its channel, and its waves are confined, until finally its divided mouth is scattered over distant wastes as it runs in seven streams to the open sea.

2. (transferred sense) a hindrance, impediment, obstacle

Inflection

Third-declension noun.

Case	Singular	Plural
Nominative	ō̆bex	ō̆bicēs
Genitive	ō̆bicis	ō̆bicum
Dative	ō̆bicī	ō̆bicibus
Accusative	ō̆bicem	ō̆bicēs
Ablative	ō̆bice	ō̆bicibus
Vocative	ō̆bex	ō̆bicēs

Related terms

• obiciō

Descendants

Descendants of ō̆bex in other languages

• → English: obex
• → Portuguese: óbice
• → Spanish: óbice

Further reading

• “obex”, in Charlton T. Lewis and Charles Short (1879) A Latin Dictionary, Oxford: Clarendon Press
• “obex”, in Charlton T. Lewis (1891) An Elementary Latin Dictionary, New York: Harper & Brothers
• obex in Gaffiot, Félix (1934) Dictionnaire illustré latin-français, Hachette.
• “obex”, in Harry Thurston Peck, editor (1898), Harper's Dictionary of Classical Antiquities, New York: Harper & Brothers
• “obex”, in William Smith et al., editor (1890), A Dictionary of Greek and Roman Antiquities, London: William Wayte. G. E. Marindin