delectus

== English == === Etymology === From Latin delectus (“selection”), from deligo (“to select”). === Noun === delectus (plural delectuses) (obsolete) An elementary reader (collection of passages) for learners of a language 1871-2, George Eliot, Middlemarch, volume I, book IV, chapter 37 If she spoke with any keenness of interest to Mr. Casaubon, he heard her with an air of patience as if she had given a quotation from the Delectus familiar to him from his tender years, and sometimes mentioned curtly what ancient sects or personages had held similar ideas, as if there were too much of that sort in stock already; at other times he would inform her that she was mistaken, and reassert what her remark had questioned. == Latin == === Etymology 1 === Perfect passive participle of dēligō (“[I] pick off; select”). ==== Participle ==== dēlēctus (feminine dēlēcta, neuter dēlēctum); first/second-declension participle picked off, having been picked off, plucked off, having been plucked off; culled, having been culled chosen, having been chosen, selected, having been selected ===== Declension ===== First/second-declension adjective. === Etymology 2 === From dēligō (“to esteem, love, select”) +‎ -tus (action noun suffix), literally “selection”. ==== Alternative forms ==== dīlēctus ==== Noun ==== dēlēctus m (genitive dēlēctūs); fourth declension selection, choice, distinction levy, recruiting ===== Declension ===== Fourth-declension noun. ===== Descendants ===== Catalan: delit Italian: diletto === References === “delectus”, in Charlton T. Lewis and Charles Short (1879), A Latin Dictionary, Oxford: Clarendon Press “delectus”, in Charlton T. Lewis (1891), An Elementary Latin Dictionary, New York: Harper & Brothers “delectus”, in Gaffiot, Félix (1934), Dictionnaire illustré latin-français, Hachette. “delectus”, in Harry Thurston Peck, editor (1898), Harper’s Dictionary of Classical Antiquities, New York: Harper & Brothers “delectus”, in William Smith et al., editor (1890), A Dictionary of Greek and Roman Antiquities, London: William Wayte. G. E. Marindin