adorabilis

Forms

adōrābilis (neuter adōrābile); third-declension two-termination adjective^[1]

Etymology

It is from Latin adōrō (“to worship”) + -bilis.^[2][1][3]

Earliest recorded meaning

It first appears in Apuleius, whose Metamorphoses speaks of the adōrābile beneficium, the “adorable kindness”, of the goddess, which rumour had made known in the narrator's homeland:^[3][4][5] worthy of adoration or reverence.^[2]

Semantic evolution

It stayed a rare word.^[3] In the 5th century the Latin version of a letter of the empress Licinia Eudoxia, preserved among the letters of Leo the Great, calls the emperor adōrābilis;^[3][5] Ecclesiastical Latin uses it of what is worthy of adoration.^[6]

English took it over in the 1610s as adorable “worthy of worship”, through French; the weakened sense “delightful, charming” is English, from 1710.^[7]

Timeline

• c. 125–175 AD – Apuleius speaks of the goddess's adorable kindness.^[3][5]
• 440–461 AD – A letter among those of Leo the Great calls the emperor adōrābilis.^[3][5]
• 1610s – Borrowed into English as adorable “worthy of worship”, through French.^[7]

Meanings

Adjective

1. Worthy of adoration or reverence, adorable.^[2][4][6]

Related words

• adōrō
• English adorable

References

1. ^ a b c d Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c Glare, P. G. W., ed. (2012), Oxford Latin Dictionary, 2nd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
3. ^ a b c d e f Thesaurus linguae Latinae (1900–), Leipzig: Teubner; Berlin: De Gruyter; open-access ed., Munich: Bayerische Akademie der Wissenschaften
4. ^ a b Lewis, Charlton T.; Short, Charles (1879), A Latin Dictionary, Oxford: Clarendon Press
5. ^ a b c d Köbler, Gerhard (2010), Lateinisches Abkunfts- und Wirkungswörterbuch für Altertum und Mittelalter, online ed., koeblergerhard.de
6. ^ a b Stelten, Leo F. (1995), Dictionary of Ecclesiastical Latin, Peabody, Mass.: Hendrickson
7. ^ a b Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com