aureus

Aureus, aurea, aureum. First and second declension, straight from aurum. It covers solid gold, gilding and mere gold colour, and the reader has to decide which from context; a Roman poet describing aurea Venus is not claiming she is made of metal.

As a noun the masculine aureus is a coin, the standard imperial gold piece worth twenty-five denarii. The figurative sense of splendid or precious is old, and aurea aetas, the golden age, is where the whole modern cliche starts. Watch the spelling against auris, ear: the ablative and dative plural aureis and auribus are far enough apart, but aurea and aurium are close enough on a fast read to derail a sentence. Gives aureole and oriole.