Afghan

Is there a technical term for a work known to have been written but of which there are no extant copies?

Amaleq13

The copies of nonextant texts are often called exemplars but, aside from "nonextant", I don't recall a specific term used for such presumably lost originals.

Afghan

Not quite what I was after although it's probably my own lack of clarity. I was after a word for works of which even copies do not survive but we know about because they are referred to by other writers: True Doctrine by Celsus, for example.

Amaleq13

No, you were clear enough. I think "nonextant" is as close as you're going to get but I threw out "exemplar" in case it was the word you were looking for but confused the meaning. I did a quick search for True Doctrine and I couldn't find anybody using the sort of term you are looking for to describe its lost status. If there is such a word, it doesn't appear to be very popular.



PS if you had used brackets ( [] ) rather than greater than/less than ( <> ), your italics format would have worked.

Afghan

Damn! It so strikes me as the sort of thing there should be a cool Greek word for.

I did actually know that but I haven't posted here for so long I've just got rusty.

Thanks though, on both counts.

S.C.Carlson

I would venture lost.

Amaleq13

Maybe it will sound more intellectual in Greek?

Ted Hoffman

I think lost is okay. We've been talking of Origen's lost reference to Josephus(?)

Amaleq13

But Afghan is looking for word that is less pedestrian or at least given a less pedestrian appearance through a Greek varnish.

John A. Broussard

I like vanus. It conveys the notion of emptiness, non-existence, vanishing or whatever. Since you're dealing with something that may never have existed in the first place, this could be a very useful term. You could refer to Celsus's famous vanus manuscript.