Etymologically
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aliquando

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Pronunciation

  • Classical: [a.lɪˈkʷan.doː][1]
  • Ecclesiastical: [a.liˈkʷan.do][1]

Forms

aliquandō (not comparable)[1]

Etymology

It is formed from the indefinite prefix ali- (of aliquis, related to alius) and quandō “when”.[2][3][4][1] Corssen took the ending of ⟨quandō⟩ to be an old word for “day”.[3]

Earliest recorded meaning

Plautus has aliquandō ōsculandō meliust, uxor, pausam fierī, “it's better, wife, to stop kissing at last”.[2] Köbler cites it from Cicero.[5]

Semantic evolution

Aliquandō is an indefinite time: “at some time or other”, “ever” (after sī), “once, formerly” in the past and “some day” in the future.[2][3] It also means “sometimes, occasionally”, and, as in Plautus, “at last, eventually”, or in commands “now at last”.[2][1] Döderlein ranks the words for “sometimes”: nōnnumquam, near to “often”, and interdum, “at times”, as opposed to “frequently”.[6]

Church Latin glosses it “at last, at times, at any time, heretofore”.[7]

Timeline

  • c. 250–184 BC – Plautus: aliquandō ōsculandō meliust … pausam fierī.[2][5]
  • 81–43 BC – Cicero: nōn dēspērō fore aliquem aliquandō, “I do not despair that there will one day be someone”.[2][5]
  • c. 383–419/420 AD – Jerome's Vulgate uses it in the Psalms and the Epistles.[3][5]

Meanings

Adverb

  1. At some time, at any time, ever.[2][3][1][7]
  2. Once, formerly.[2][1]
  3. Some day (in the future).[2]
  4. sometimes, occasionally.[2][1][7]
  5. At last, finally; now at last.[2][1][7]

References

  1. ^ a b c d e f g h i Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
  2. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k Glare, P. G. W., ed. (2012), Oxford Latin Dictionary, 2nd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
  3. ^ a b c d e Lewis, Charlton T.; Short, Charles (1879), A Latin Dictionary, Oxford: Clarendon Press
  4. ^ Thesaurus linguae Latinae (1900–), Leipzig: Teubner; Berlin: De Gruyter; open-access ed., Munich: Bayerische Akademie der Wissenschaften
  5. ^ a b c d Köbler, Gerhard (2010), Lateinisches Abkunfts- und Wirkungswörterbuch für Altertum und Mittelalter, online ed., koeblergerhard.de
  6. ^ Döderlein, Ludwig (1874), Döderlein’s Hand-book of Latin Synonymes, tr. H. H. Arnold, Andover: W. F. Draper
  7. ^ a b c d Stelten, Leo F. (1995), Dictionary of Ecclesiastical Latin, Peabody, Mass.: Hendrickson