compassïon

Forms

compassïon f.^[1]

• conpassion, compassiun, cumpassiun, conpassiun, compassioun, compacion, compaission^[2][3]

Middle French also wrote compasion, compation and compascion.^[4]

Etymology

It is borrowed from Ecclesiastical Latin compassiō (“fellow-suffering, pity”),^[3][5][6] from compatior (“to suffer with”).^[3] The Latin noun is formed from con- and passiō (“suffering”), a calque of Ancient Greek συμπάθεια (sumpátheia).^[7] Lewis and Short record it as a word of Church Latin, in Tertullian.^[8] The DEAF gives the same etymon,^[9] and the FEW records Old Occitan compassion beside it.^[6]

Earliest recorded meaning

The first dated record is in Wace's Roman de Brut, 1155, in the spelling compassiun, for the feeling of sharing another's suffering;^[3] the AND also dates its first citation to 1155.^[2] Tobler–Lommatzsch quotes the word from the Dialogues of Gregory, from Liège, of the late 12th century.^[1][10]

Semantic evolution

The word was at home in religious prose: the sermons of Saint Bernard, translated in Lorraine at the end of the 12th century, have compassion and conpassion for the pity of Christ and of the faithful.^[1][11] The AND adds the sense of co-suffering, being afflicted by the same condition,^[2] which Middle French medicine used for an organ suffering with another.^[12] The FEW dates the general sense in French from the end of the 12th century,^[6] and the feast of the Compassion of the Virgin is recorded in 1771.^[3] The modern word is French compassion.^[3]

Timeline

• 1155 – compassiun in Wace's Roman de Brut.^[3][2]
• 1175–1200 – in the Dialogues of Gregory, from Liège.^[1][10]
• 1180–1200 – compassion and conpassion in the sermons of Saint Bernard, from Lorraine.^[11]
• 1285–1300 – in a Picard version of the Book of Job, the first record the DEAF cites.^[9][13]
• 1771 – the feast of the Compassion of the Virgin.^[3]

Meanings

Noun

1. compassion, pity, sharing in another's suffering.^[1][2][3]
2. co-suffering, being afflicted by the same condition.^[2]

Anglo-Norman

The AND heads the word compassion, first cited in 1155, with the spellings compassiun, cumpassiun, conpassiun, compassioun, compacion and compaission; it also records the phrase for feeling pity for someone.^[2] The MED derives the Middle English noun compassioun from Latin and Old French.^[14]

Descendants

• Middle French compassion (→ French compassion)^[12][3]
• Middle English compassioun (borrowed; → English compassion)^[14]

Usage notes

Tobler–Lommatzsch heads the word compassïon, the AND and the DMF compassion.^[1][2] Another compassion, “measure”, in the chanson de geste Gaufrey, belongs with the verb compasser: Godefroy and Greimas record it, and the FEW lists it under Latin compassō.^[15][16][12]

References

1. ^ a b c d e f Tobler, Adolf; Lommatzsch, Erhard (1925–2002), Altfranzösisches Wörterbuch, 11 vols., Berlin / Wiesbaden / Stuttgart: Weidmann / Steiner, p. 2:625
2. ^ a b c d e f g h Anglo-Norman Dictionary (AND2), Aberystwyth University, anglo-norman.net (2nd ed., 2005–), p. s.v. compassion
3. ^ a b c d e f g h i j Trésor de la langue française informatisé (2004), ATILF – CNRS & Université de Lorraine, atilf.fr/tlfi; electronic version of Imbs, Paul; Quemada, Bernard, eds. (1971–1994), Trésor de la langue française, Paris: CNRS / Gallimard
4. ^ FROLEX 3.0, lexique morphologique du français médiéval (IXe–XVe s.), Base de français médiéval, ENS de Lyon (from the BFM, the Nouveau Corpus d'Amsterdam and the DMF), github.com/sheiden/Medieval-French-Language-Toolkit
5. ^ Gamillscheg, Ernst (1966–1969), Etymologisches Wörterbuch der französischen Sprache, 2nd, fully revised ed., Heidelberg: Winter, p. 267
6. ^ a b c Wartburg, Walther von, et al. (1922–2002), Französisches Etymologisches Wörterbuch, 25 vols., Bonn / Leipzig / Basel: Klopp / Teubner / Zbinden, p. 2:973
7. ^ Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
8. ^ Lewis, Charlton T.; Short, Charles (1879), A Latin Dictionary, Oxford: Clarendon Press
9. ^ a b Baldinger, Kurt; Möhren, Frankwalt; Städtler, Thomas, eds. (1971–2021), Dictionnaire étymologique de l'ancien français (DEAF), Heidelberg: Heidelberger Akademie der Wissenschaften; DEAFél / DEAFpré, deaf-server.adw.uni-heidelberg.de, p. s.v. compassïon
10. ^ a b Möhren, Frankwalt, Dictionnaire étymologique de l'ancien français (DEAF): Complément bibliographique, electronic version (DEAFBiblEl), Heidelberger Akademie der Wissenschaften, alma.hadw-bw.de/deafbibl (texts by siglum, with their dates), p. DialGregF
11. ^ a b Stein, Achim; Kunstmann, Pierre; Gleßgen, Martin-D., eds., Nouveau Corpus d'Amsterdam, version 4 (lemmatised corpus of Old French texts, after A. Dees), Universität Stuttgart, github.com/michaniets/NCA (texts by DEAF siglum), p. SBernAn2S
12. ^ a b c Dictionnaire du Moyen Français, version 2015 (DMF 2015), ATILF – CNRS & Université de Lorraine, atilf.fr/dmf, p. s.v. compassion
13. ^ Möhren, Frankwalt, Dictionnaire étymologique de l'ancien français (DEAF): Complément bibliographique, electronic version (DEAFBiblEl), Heidelberger Akademie der Wissenschaften, alma.hadw-bw.de/deafbibl (texts by siglum, with their dates), p. JobB
14. ^ a b Kurath, Hans; Kuhn, Sherman M.; Lewis, Robert E., eds. (1952–2001), Middle English Dictionary, Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press; online edition ed. Frances McSparran et al. (2000–2018)
15. ^ Godefroy, Frédéric (1881–1902), Dictionnaire de l'ancienne langue française et de tous ses dialectes du IXe au XVe siècle, 10 vols., Paris: Vieweg / Bouillon, p. 2:204
16. ^ Greimas, Algirdas Julien (1979), Dictionnaire de l'ancien français jusqu'au milieu du XIVe siècle, 2nd ed., Paris: Larousse (printing of 1988), p. s.v. compassion