catholicum

Catholicum is a Latin neuter adjective meaning "universal" or "general." It derives from the Greek katholikos via Latin Catholicus, and shares its root with the English term Catholic, which denotes the universal church in Christian usage. In Latin, the masculine form is catholicus, the feminine form catholica, and the neuter form catholicum; they agree with the noun they modify in gender and number.

In ecclesiastical Latin, catholicus is used to signify universality, as in phrases that describe things relating to the universal Church or the catholic faith. The neuter form catholicum appears when modifying neuter nouns or when used predicatively with neuter nouns; its sense remains “universal” or “general” rather than specifically "Roman Catholic" unless the context defines that sense.

In taxonomy and science, Latin adjectives are common in binomial nomenclature. The form catholicum can appear as a species epithet in neuter-gender genera, indicating a universalistic or broadly distributed attribute, though it is not among the most common Latin epithets. The usage depends on the gender of the genus to which it is attached.

The term is primarily of historical and linguistic interest, illustrating how Latin adjectives reflect grammatical gender and how the same root underlies concepts of universality in religious and scholarly language.