Luca bos

Lūca (“Lucanian”) + bōs (“cow”), to mean elephant because the Romans first saw elephants in Heraclea, a city in Lucania, as part of Pyrrhus of Epirus's army.

• (Classical Latin) IPA^(key): [ˈɫuː.ka ˈboːs]
• (modern Italianate Ecclesiastical) IPA^(key): [ˈluː.ka ˈbɔs]

Lūca bōs f (genitive Lūcae bovis); irregular, variously declined, first declension, third declension

1. Lucanian cow (an epithet for elephant)
   • c. 99 BCE – 55 BCE, Lucretius, De rerum natura 5.1302
   • c. 99 BCE – 55 BCE, Lucretius, De rerum natura 5.1339
   • c. 77 CE – 79 CE, Pliny the Elder, Naturalis Historia 8.16

First-declension noun with a third-declension noun (irregular).

¹Old Latin.

• elephāns
• barrus

• prius pariet locusta Lūcam bovem

• “Lūca bōs”, in Charlton T. Lewis and Charles Short (1879) A Latin Dictionary, Oxford: Clarendon Press