adamo

Forms

adamō (present infinitive adamāre, perfect active adamāvī, supine adamātum); first conjugation^[1]

Etymology

It is from Latin ad- + amō (“to love”), with ⟨ad-⟩ in an intensive sense.^[2][3][1][4] De Vaan traces amō to Proto-Italic *ama- (“to take, hold”) and Proto-Indo-European *h₃mh₃- (“to take hold of”), and explains the Latin meaning as a development from “take someone's hand” to “treat as a friend”; he compares Ancient Greek ὄμνυμι (ómnumi, “to swear”).^[5]

Earliest recorded meaning

The TLL finds nothing before Cicero,^[3] who in the Verrines uses it of a man who saw some very beautiful and very old statues and set his heart on them, and of anything that took his fancy.^[2][4]

Semantic evolution

The TLL notes that the perfect forms greatly prevail and that the sense “to come to love” seems to have grown from them; the present is rare, as in Cicero's De finibus, Columella, Petronius and Pliny.^[3] Lewis & Short add that in Cicero it is always perfect or pluperfect.^[4] It is used of loving or admiring persons, as Nepos says that Dion admired and loved Plato so much that he gave himself up to him, and of qualities and pursuits, as Cicero's man who had come to love the endurance in Socratic talk.^[2] Mela uses it of the Moon falling in love with Endymion, and the elder Seneca of a wife's adulterous love.^[2] Stelten gives “love greatly, fall in love”.^[6]

Timeline

• 81–43 BC – Cicero, of coveting statues and of loving a virtue.^[2][4][3][7]
• c. 100–24 BC – Nepos, of Dion's love for Plato.^[2][7]
• 43/44 AD – Mela, of the Moon's love for Endymion.^[2][7]
• 1st century AD – Columella, in the present tense.^[4][3][7]

Meanings

Verb

1. To come to love or admire greatly (persons, qualities, pursuits).^[2][4][1][6]
2. To fall in love with; to love adulterously.^[2][1]
3. To form a desire for, covet.^[2][1]

Word family

• adamator

Related words

• amō
• amor

References

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