aedificatio

Forms

aedificātiō f (genitive aedificātiōnis); third declension^[1]

Etymology

It is from Latin aedificō (“to build”) + -tiō.^[2][3][4][1]

Earliest recorded meaning

The TLL finds it twice in Plautus and notes that all the other poets avoided the word.^[4][5] De Vaan's first author for it is Cato,^[6] whose speech uses it of a building.^[2]

Semantic evolution

In Classical prose it meant both the act of building and the building itself.^[2][3] Varro speaks of directing one's building towards the care of the ancients rather than the luxury of his own day, and Cicero calls someone's building “immense and intolerable”;^[2][3] Cicero also uses it of a house with all its buildings, and of the built-up area of a city.^[3][7]

The Vulgate gave it a figurative sense: Paul speaks ad aedificātiōnem, “for edification”, the building up of the Church and of believers.^[3][7][8] This moral and religious edification is the sense Niermeyer records for the medieval language.^[9] British medieval Latin also used it for the building of churches and houses and for the duty of repairing bridges and fortresses.^[10]

English edification was borrowed in the mid-14th century in its religious sense, partly through Old French.^[11] It survives in Italian edificazione.^[7]

Timeline

• c. 250–184 BC – Plautus uses it twice.^[4][5]
• 234–149 BC – Cato uses it of a building.^[2][6][5]
• 116–27 BC – Varro uses it of the act of building.^[2][5]
• 81–43 BC – Cicero uses it of building works and of a city's buildings.^[3][7][5]
• 390–406 AD – The Vulgate uses it for spiritual edification.^[3][5]
• mid-14th century – English borrows it as edification.^[11]

Meanings

Noun

1. The act or process of building, construction.^[2][3]
2. A building, edifice; a group of buildings, a built-up area.^[2][3][7]
3. (Ecclesiastical Latin) edification, building up (of the Church or of a person).^[3][8][9]
4. (Medieval Latin) The duty of building or repairing bridges and fortresses.^[10]

Word family

• aedificatiuncula

References

1. ^ a b Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f g h 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 c Thesaurus linguae Latinae (1900–), Leipzig: Teubner; Berlin: De Gruyter; open-access ed., Munich: Bayerische Akademie der Wissenschaften
5. ^ a b c d e f Köbler, Gerhard (2010), Lateinisches Abkunfts- und Wirkungswörterbuch für Altertum und Mittelalter, online ed., koeblergerhard.de
6. ^ a b 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 c d e Conte, Gian Biagio; Pianezzola, Emilio; Ranucci, Giuliano (2010), il Latino: Vocabolario della lingua latina, 3rd ed., Florence: Le Monnier
8. ^ a b Stelten, Leo F. (1995), Dictionary of Ecclesiastical Latin, Peabody, Mass.: Hendrickson
9. ^ a b Niermeyer, J. F. (1976), Mediae Latinitatis Lexicon Minus, Leiden: Brill
10. ^ a b Latham, R. E., D. R. Howlett, R. K. Ashdowne, et al. (1975–2013), Dictionary of Medieval Latin from British Sources, London: British Academy / Oxford University Press
11. ^ a b Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com