Laudator Temporis Acti

It's strange what lurks in the brain cells. Someone once asked me what the Latin word for cuttlefish was, and I answered sepia without hesitation. A recent blog post by Roger Pearse, "The fragrant underwear of St Nicholas," suggests that linteamina in a medieval legend (BHL 6168) means underwear. But subligaculum is the word that popped into my mind.

According to Leah Shopkow, "Mooning the Abbot: A Tale of Disorder, Vulgarity, Ethnicity, and Underwear in the Monastery," in Craig M. Nakashian and Daniel P. Franke, edd., Prowess, Piety, and Public Order in Medieval Society: Studies in Honor of Richard W. Kaeuper (Leiden: Brill, 2017), pp. 179-198 (at 185):

Medieval Latin had many words for different sorts of underwear, most derived from the classical past, but often with changed meanings.²⁰ The more common Latin word for drawers was femoralia, or sometimes feminalia (both forms appear in the Vulgate). Texts also used bracae, sometimes written braccae or bracchia, which is etymologically linked through a common Indo-European root to the archaic modern word "breeches" or "britches." Isidore of Seville in the Etymologies offered both terms, when he discusses the garments of the priest.<sup>21

20</sup> On monastic underwear generally, see Simon Tugwell, "Caligae and Other Items of Medieval Religious Dress: A Lexical Study," Romance Philology 61 (Spring 2007): 1–23.

²¹ Isidore of Seville, Etymologiae, PL 82:684. This is quoted by Hrabanus Maurus in his De universe, PL 11:568. On the etymology of breeches, see "breech, n.". OED Online. March 2014. Oxford University Press. http://www.oed.com/view/Entry/23009?rskey=mrQzVu&result=1&isAdvanced=false (accessed March 20, 2014).