adoro

Forms

adōrō (present infinitive adōrāre, perfect active adōrāvī, supine adōrātum); first conjugation^[1]

Etymology

It is from Latin ad- + ōrō (“to speak, plead”).^[2][3] De Vaan takes ⟨ōrō⟩, whose oldest sense is “to plead, speak openly”, as a verb made from ōs (“mouth”), which goes back to Proto-Italic *ōs- and Proto-Indo-European *h₃eh₁-os (“mouth”), cognate with Sanskrit आस् (ā́s-, “mouth”) and Hittite aiš (“mouth”).^[4]

Earliest recorded meaning

Servius says that in the old writers it meant simply “to speak to”.^[5] The OLD's earliest example is the poet Laevius, of someone praying to Venus.^[2]

Semantic evolution

Its early sense is “to address, plead with, entreat”: Ovid's Ariadne does not beg by her merits.^[2][5] In religion it is to approach the gods as a suppliant, to pray for their favour, as Livy's prayer for the peace of the gods, and to avert a danger, as the custom of greeting lightning by clucking in Pliny the Elder.^[2] It came to mean paying divine honours to rulers, as the nations that knelt to Alexander in the elder Seneca, and to venerate places and things, to admire, as Pliny admiring the care of the ancients, or to greet: Tacitus has Otho stretching out his hands to salute the crowd.^[2]

In Late Latin it meant “to worship”, and Church Latin glosses it “adore, worship, reverence, honour”.^[6][7] English adore (late 14th century) comes from it through Old French aorer.^[6]

Timeline

• 59 BC–17 AD – Livy of praying for the peace of the gods.^[2][8]
• 43 BC–18 AD – Ovid of entreating.^[2][8]
• 98–115 AD – Tacitus of saluting a crowd.^[2][8]
• late 14th century – English adore through French.^[6]

Meanings

Verb

1. To speak to, address; to plead with, entreat.^[2][5][1]
2. To approach the gods as a suppliant, pray to; to pray for; to avert by a ritual gesture.^[2][1]
3. To pay divine honours to, worship, adore; to do homage to rulers.^[2][1][7]
4. To venerate; to admire; to celebrate in verse.^[2][1]
5. To salute, greet.^[2]

Word family

• adōrābilis
• adōrātiō
• adōrātor
• adōria
• coadoro

Related words

• ōrō
• ōs
• English adore

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 k l m Glare, P. G. W., ed. (2012), Oxford Latin Dictionary, 2nd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
3. ^ Thesaurus linguae Latinae (1900–), Leipzig: Teubner; Berlin: De Gruyter; open-access ed., Munich: Bayerische Akademie der Wissenschaften
4. ^ de Vaan, Michiel (2008), Etymological Dictionary of Latin and the other Italic Languages, Leiden Indo-European Etymological Dictionary Series 7, Leiden; Boston: Brill
5. ^ a b c Lewis, Charlton T.; Short, Charles (1879), A Latin Dictionary, Oxford: Clarendon Press
6. ^ a b c Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
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