Oasis

Forms

Oasis f sg (genitive Oasis); third declension^[1] The accusative is Oasim.^[2]

Etymology

It is borrowed from Ancient Greek Ὄασις (Óasis),^[3][2][4] a word of Egyptian origin.^[4][1] Wiktionary traces the Greek word through Demotic to Egyptian wḥꜣt (“oasis, cauldron”);^[1] Lewis & Short and Georges call it Coptic, Georges glossing the Coptic word as “inhabited place”.^[3][2] Compare Coptic ⲟⲩⲁϩⲉ (ouahe) and Arabic واحة (wāḥa).^[1][5]

Earliest recorded meaning

Köbler and Georges record it first in Ulpian (before 223 AD), in the Digest, as the Oasis to which people were banished.^[4][2]

Semantic evolution

In Latin it was mostly the name of the Great Oasis in the Libyan desert in Upper Egypt, a place of banishment under the emperors;^[6][3][2] Georges also mentions the Little Oasis in Middle Egypt,^[2] and Gaffiot describes it as a name given to several places in the desert.^[7] Lewis & Short give the general sense of a fertile, inhabited spot in the Libyan desert.^[3] Pliny the Elder already has the derived adjective in Oasitae nomi.^[3][2]

English took the word in the 17th century as oasis, from French and directly from Latin,^[5] and German has Oase.^[4]

Timeline

• before 223 AD – Ulpian names the Oasis as a place of banishment.^[2][4]
• 1610s – English borrows it as oasis, at first of the Libyan desert.^[5]
• by 1800 – The English word is used figuratively of any fertile place in a waste.^[5]

Meanings

Proper noun

1. The Great oasis in the Libyan Desert, a place of banishment under the Roman Empire.^[6][3][2]
2. Any fertile, inhabited spot in the Libyan desert; also the Little Oasis in Middle Egypt.^[3][2][7]

Word family

• Oasēnus
• Oasītēs

Related words

• English oasis

References

1. ^ a b c d e f Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f g h i j Georges, Karl Ernst (1913–1918), Ausführliches lateinisch-deutsches Handwörterbuch, 8th ed., ed. Heinrich Georges, Hannover; Leipzig: Hahn
3. ^ a b c d e f g Lewis, Charlton T.; Short, Charles (1879), A Latin Dictionary, Oxford: Clarendon Press
4. ^ a b c d e Köbler, Gerhard (2010), Lateinisches Abkunfts- und Wirkungswörterbuch für Altertum und Mittelalter, online ed., koeblergerhard.de
5. ^ a b c d Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
6. ^ a b Glare, P. G. W., ed. (2012), Oxford Latin Dictionary, 2nd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
7. ^ a b Gaffiot, Félix (2016), Dictionnaire latin-français, new ed. by Gérard Gréco et al. (Gaffiot 2016), online ed.