Lemma 1ager

nounmasculine

field, ground; farm, land, estate, park; territory, country; terrain; soil

Morphology2 analyses

nominative singularager · regular

vocative singularager · regular

Lewis & Short

key · agerFull entry

ăger, gri, m. [Germ. Acker, Eng. acre, Sanscr. agras = surface, floor; Grimm conjectured that it was connected with ago, a pecore agendo, and this was the ancient view; cf. Müll., and Don. ad; so the Germ. Trift = pasture, from treiben, to drive]

I.In an extended sense, territory, district, domain, the whole of the soil belonging to a community syn.: terra, tellus, arvum, solum, rus, humus; opp. terra, which includes many such possessions taken together; fundum habet in agro Thurino, id. Fragm. ap. (pro Tull. 14): Herz. — In the Roman polity: ager Romanus, the Roman possessions in land (distinguished from ager peregrinus, foreign territory) was divided into ager publicus, public property, domains, and ager privatus, private estates; with 153 sq.

II.In a more restricted sense.

A.Improdued or productive land, a field, whether pasture, arable, nursery ground, or any thing of the kind — * Of a piece of ground where vines or trees are planted, a nursery. — Of a place of habitation in the country, estate, villa: (so, Hom. Od. 24, 205).

B.The fields, the open country, the country (as in Gr. or ), like rus, in opp. to the town, urbs (in prose writers generally only in the plur.). — And even in opp. to a village or hamlet, the open field.

C.Poet., in opp. to mountains, plain, valley, champaign.

D.As a measure of length (opp. frons, breadth).