This study is a contextual analysis of probable Etruscan loanwords in Latin that pertain to the political and military semantic sphere. By the time these words appear in the texts of later Roman historians, grammarians, and antiquarians, appropriation by Roman literary culture had displaced the depth of their origins from an Etruscan cultural context. However, little explicit evidence exists concerning both the Etruscan language and sociopolitical structure from which these words were borrowed. I examine and critique the methodology of both ancient grammarians and contemporary linguists for their construction of the etymologies of the Etruscan loanwords in Latin to uncover a clearer account of the cultural context in which these words appear in Latin texts. Accounts of etymologies for the loanwords of the political and military semantic sphere provided by ancient grammarians and antiquarians such as Paulus Festus, Varro, Macrobius, Isidore of Seville, and others reveal the Roman perception of these words and their cultural implications. Thus it is apparent that the Roman perspective of Etruscan culture characterizes the methodologies of ancient sources in the construction of etymologies, resulting in the use of popular or folk etymology as a tool to explain their origins. Further, contemporary historical linguistic studies incorporate information from ancient etymological sources as foundational to their scientific analyses of word origins, but they are also guilty of holding the same cultural assumptions that ancient grammarians and antiquarians perpetrate. Since both rely on the method of constructing popular etymologies to understand these unfamiliar terms, which is itself a culturally biased approach, they reveal a clear conception of the cultural implications of Etruscan loanwords from this particular semantic group.
