acclamo

Forms

acclāmō (present infinitive acclāmāre, perfect active acclāmāvī, supine acclāmātum); first conjugation^[1] It is also spelled adclāmō.^[2][3]

Etymology

It is from Latin ad- (“to, at”) + clāmō (“to shout”).^[2][4][5] De Vaan takes clāmō as a verb made from a lost noun for “shout”, from Proto-Italic *klām-o/ā- (“shout, shouting”) and Proto-Indo-European *klh₁-m(o)-, the root of calō¹ (“to call”).^[6]

Earliest recorded meaning

Its first uses are Cicero's, in a hostile sense: in the Verrines he calls a man the enemy of all who had shouted out against him, and in the Brutus he says he does not fear that his hearers will cry out at him.^[2][3][4]

Semantic evolution

Lewis & Short note that in the time of the Republic it is mostly hostile, a crowd shouting its disapproval, as also in Velleius.^[3][2] After the Augustan period it is chiefly to shout approval or applaud, as Tacitus has of the people and soldiers acclaiming Otho, and Livy of crowds hailing a man as saviour and liberator.^[3][2] With direct speech it is simply to call out, as in Seneca and Suetonius.^[2] Stelten glosses it “cry out at, shout, exclaim”.^[7] Etymonline notes that it meant “to claim” in Medieval Latin, and that English acclaim, from the early 14th century, had that sense first;^[5] “applaud” is recorded from the 1630s.^[5]

Timeline

• 81–43 BC – Cicero, of shouting against a speaker.^[2][3][8]
• 59 BC–17 AD – Livy, of hailing a man as saviour.^[2][3][8]
• 98–115 AD – Tacitus, of acclaiming Otho.^[3][8]
• Medieval Latin – To claim.^[5]
• early 14th century – English acclaim, first “to lay claim to”.^[5]

Meanings

Verb

1. To shout at a person; to call out (words).^[2][3][1][7]
2. To raise an outcry against, protest.^[2][3][1]
3. To shout approval, applaud; to hail as.^[2][3][1]
4. (Medieval Latin) To claim.^[5]

Word family

• acclāmātiō

Related words

• clāmō
• conclāmō
• dēclāmō
• exclāmō
• inclāmō
• proclāmō
• reclāmō
• English acclaim

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 k Glare, P. G. W., ed. (2012), Oxford Latin Dictionary, 2nd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
3. ^ a b c d e f g h i j Lewis, Charlton T.; Short, Charles (1879), A Latin Dictionary, Oxford: Clarendon Press
4. ^ a b Thesaurus linguae Latinae (1900–), Leipzig: Teubner; Berlin: De Gruyter; open-access ed., Munich: Bayerische Akademie der Wissenschaften
5. ^ a b c d e f Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
6. ^ de Vaan, Michiel (2008), Etymological Dictionary of Latin and the other Italic Languages, Leiden Indo-European Etymological Dictionary Series 7, Leiden; Boston: Brill
7. ^ a b Stelten, Leo F. (1995), Dictionary of Ecclesiastical Latin, Peabody, Mass.: Hendrickson
8. ^ a b c Köbler, Gerhard (2010), Lateinisches Abkunfts- und Wirkungswörterbuch für Altertum und Mittelalter, online ed., koeblergerhard.de