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Semantic Notes to Latin Etymologies

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 April 2026

Norman W. DeWitt
Norman W. DeWitt*
Affiliation:
Victoria College, University of Toronto
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Extract

For a full century the Latin language has been subjected to the most searching scrutiny by comparative methods, semantic data being employed as a sort of control. While these studies may be judged to have reached their limits, a residue of words remains for which no satisfactory etymology has been found, or none at all, as may be discovered by consulting the very conservative dictionary of Ernout and Meillet. Upon these more obscure words, the writer believes, some light may be thrown by following semantic clues, and the following notes are offered in the hope of demonstrating this to be true. Documentation is not presented for usages that may be verified in any lexicon.

Information

Type
Research Article
Information
Language , Volume 16 , Issue 2-Part1: April-June , June 1940 , pp. 88 - 94
Copyright
Copyright © 1940 Linguistic Society of America

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References

1 Dictionnaire étymologique de la langue latine, Paris 1932.

2 Meyer-Lübke, REW3 2638.

3 Ad Eclog. 10.10.

4 Meyer-Lübke 5306.

5 De Re Rustica 1.60. For the vowel, igitur from quid agitur is not too certain. Sommer, Lateinische Laut- u. Formenlehre 77.5 (Heidelberg 1914), cites pināria, pidātū, sinātus (bis), fistūca.

6 Aeneid 2.424.

7 Martial, Liber Spect. 20.2.

8 Aulus Gellius 1.25.2.

9 Ad Aen. 6.244.

10 Aen. 3.67-8: animamque sepulchro / condimus; Ovid, Fasti 5.451; Pliny, Epist. 7.27.

11 Georgics 1.335.

12 Plutarch, Sertorius 22.

13 Plutarch, Sertorius 22, Camillus 11.

14 Livy 1.18.

15 Servius ad Aen. 12.120; Aulus Gellius 12.3.3.

16 Cf. J. A. K. Thomson, CQ 30.1-3 (1936).

17 Festus 51 Lindsay (Teubner, 1934), 58 Müller.

18 Georgics 1.54; 2.11, 58; Propertius 1.2, 10.