Abstract
The origin and early meaning of Latin exīlis-e have not yet received a convincing explanation. It is suggested in this paper that in exīlis-e —owing to the fact that the traditional view which relates it with exiguus can hardly be accepted— it is possible to recognize an ancient rural and augural word *ekssu(e)idslis , strongly related with lat. sidus , ‘star’, resulting of the IE root *su(e)id- , ‘shine, blaze’. The laicization of its early meaning ‘away from the star’s fortune’ i.e. ‘being out of luck’ would have caused a semantic transfer to ‘weak, thin, little’. Many Latin and romance parallel cases prove the possibility of this hypothesis.
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