etymologica

By the ninth century, scholars began to work on etymologica — lexical, grammatical works that culminated in the Etymologicum magnum in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries — a work referred to frequently, but of which we have no existing complete manuscript.

Analyzing Becky Sharp’s Trash 2008

These etymologica are important because they quote from literary works ancient in their own time, providing later lexicographers evidence of word usages and meanings that otherwise would have been lost.

Analyzing Becky Sharp’s Trash 2008

By other changes of construction we have still the figura etymologica, but no longer a cognate accusative.

A Grammar of Septuagint Greek 1856-1924 1905

Cognate Dative.a. Another form of the figura etymologica which abounds in the LXX may be called Cognate Dative.

A Grammar of Septuagint Greek 1856-1924 1905

As a bit of etymologica, the word isn't really one of the more obscura, being only a not uncommon kind of metonymy -- the container for the contained -- though less usual than most examples, in that the figurative meaning has completely supplanted the literal.

VERBATIM: The Language Quarterly Vol IX No 2 1982