amplexus

Forms

amplexus m (genitive amplexūs); fourth declension^[1]

Etymology

It is formed from amplector (“to embrace”) with the noun suffix -tus.^[2][3][1] De Vaan explains ⟨amplector⟩ as amb- (“around”) and plectō (“to plait”), from Proto-Italic *plekt- and Proto-Indo-European *pleḱ-t- (“to plait, twine”), cognate with Ancient Greek πλέκω (plékō, “to braid, twine”) and Old Church Slavonic плести (plesti, “to plait”).^[4]

Earliest recorded meaning

Köbler gives Lucretius as its first author,^[5] who has amplexū terrārum, “the embrace of the lands”.^[6]

Semantic evolution

It is a clasping with the arms or hands, an embrace, also a sexual embrace, as in a speech of Caelius, and the encircling coils of a snake, as Cicero's boy found asleep “wrapped in a snake's coils”.^[2][6] Especially in poetry and in geography it is the embrace or circuit of a place, as Cicero's harbours enclosed “in the embrace” of a city.^[2][1] Lewis and Short call it mostly poetic and post-Augustan.^[6]

Church Latin glosses it “an embrace”.^[7] Köbler finds it in Bede and in charters.^[5]

Timeline

• 96–55 BC – Lucretius of the embrace of the lands.^[6][5]
• 81–43 BC – Cicero of a snake's coils and of a city's circuit.^[2][5]

Meanings

Noun

1. An embrace, clasp; a sexual embrace;^[2][6][1][7] (plural) caresses.^[2][6][1][7]
2. The coils (of a snake).^[2][1]
3. An encircling, circuit, circumference.^[2][1]

Related words

• amplector
• plectō
• complexus
• ōsculum

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 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 d Köbler, Gerhard (2010), Lateinisches Abkunfts- und Wirkungswörterbuch für Altertum und Mittelalter, online ed., koeblergerhard.de
6. ^ a b c d e f Lewis, Charlton T.; Short, Charles (1879), A Latin Dictionary, Oxford: Clarendon Press
7. ^ a b c Stelten, Leo F. (1995), Dictionary of Ecclesiastical Latin, Peabody, Mass.: Hendrickson