aegritudo

Forms

aegritūdō f (genitive aegritūdinis); third declension^[1]

Etymology

It is from Latin aeger (“sick, ill”) + -tūdō.^[2][1][3] De Vaan traces aeger to Proto-Italic *aigro- and Proto-Indo-European *h₂eyg-ro-.^[4]

Earliest recorded meaning

De Vaan and the TLL date it from Plautus, in the sense of grief.^[4][3][2]

Semantic evolution

The TLL finds that writers up to Columella use it only of distress of mind.^[3] Cicero makes it his term for grief, as Augustine later notes.^[3] Lewis & Short note that it covers sickness of body and mind, while aegrōtātiō is only bodily.^[5] The bodily sense appears after the Augustan age: Mela writes of people who waste away with age or illness, and Pliny the Elder of exhausted elephants.^[2][5] Tacitus has the illness of Germanicus, and the jurists use it in law.^[3] Church Latin glosses it illness, sickness.^[6]

Timeline

• c. 250–184 BC – Plautus of grief.^[2][4][3][7]
• 81–43 BC – Cicero's term for grief.^[3][7]
• 43/44 AD – Mela of illness.^[2][7]
• 23/24–79 AD – Pliny the Elder of sick elephants.^[5][7]

Meanings

Noun

1. Physical sickness, illness, disease.^[2][5][6][1]
2. Distress of mind, grief, sorrow, anxiety.^[2][5][1]

Related words

• aeger
• aegrōtō
• aegrimōnia

References

1. ^ a b c d e f Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f g Glare, P. G. W., ed. (2012), Oxford Latin Dictionary, 2nd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
3. ^ a b c d e f g Thesaurus linguae Latinae (1900–), Leipzig: Teubner; Berlin: De Gruyter; open-access ed., Munich: Bayerische Akademie der Wissenschaften
4. ^ a b c 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 d e Lewis, Charlton T.; Short, Charles (1879), A Latin Dictionary, Oxford: Clarendon Press
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