Etymologically
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adorabilis

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Pronunciation

  • Classical: [a.doːˈraː.bɪ.lɪs][1]
  • Ecclesiastical: [a.doˈraː.bi.lis][1]

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]

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