calvus

[kal-vuhs]

adjective

Meteorology.

1. (of a cumulonimbus cloud) having its upper portion changing from a rounded, cumuliform shape to a diffuse, whitish, cirriform mass with vertical striations.

Word History and Origins

Origin of calvus¹

< New Latin, Latin: literally, bald

Example Sentences

The latest incident which Catullus mentions is the speech of his friend Calvus, delivered in August 54 b.c. against Vatinius13.

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A line in the poem, immediately preceding that containing the allusion to the speech of Calvus,— Per consulatum perierat Vatinius,— was, till the appearance of Schwabe's 'Quaestiones Catullianae,' accepted as a proof that Catullus had actually witnessed the Consulship of Vatinius in 47 b.c.

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Catullus in these poems expresses the animosity which the 'boni' generally entertained towards the chiefs of the popular party: and his intimacy at this time with Calvus, who was a member of the Senatorian party, and who lampooned Caesar and Pompey in the same spirit, may have given some political edge to his Satire.

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The poets of the Ciceronian age,—Hortensius, Memmius, Lucretius, Catullus, Calvus, Cinna, &c.—either themselves belonged to the governing class, or were men of leisure and independent means, living as equals with the members of that class.

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We may suppose too that the cultivation of music had some share in eliciting the lyrical movement in Latin verse from the fact mentioned by Horace, that the songs of Catullus and Calvus were ever in the mouths of the fashionable professors of that art in a later age.

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