angustia

Forms

angustia f (genitive angustiae); first declension^[1] It is usually plural, angustiae.^[2]

Etymology

It is formed from Latin angustus (“narrow”) + -ia.^[2][3][1] De Vaan derives angustus from an s-stem noun, Proto-Italic *angos- “narrowness”, from the root of angō (“to squeeze, choke”), Proto-Indo-European *h₂emǵʰ- (“to tie, tighten”); cognates are Ancient Greek ἄγχω (ánkhō, “to squeeze, strangle”), Sanskrit अंहु (aṃhú-, “narrow”) and Old High German angust (“fear”).^[4]

Earliest recorded meaning

Köbler's first source is the Rhetorica ad Herennium.^[5] In Cicero's letters a pass is easily blocked with small garrisons propter angustiās, “because of its narrowness”.^[2]

Semantic evolution

Its literal senses are lack of room, narrowness and crowding, and then a narrow place: a pass or defile (Caesar), an isthmus (Cicero calls Corinth placed “in the narrows and jaws of Greece”), a strait of the sea and a narrow passage in the body.^[2] Angustiae ūrīnae is strangury.^[2]

Figuratively it is any restriction: confinement (Seneca's great minds chafe in the body's prison), a narrow meaning, shortness of time, and shortage of money or supplies, as in Cicero's aerāriī angustiīs, “the straits of the treasury”.^[2] From this came difficulty and distress, and in Church Latin anguish and, in the plural, tribulations and trials.^[1][6] English anguish comes from it through Old French anguisse.^[7]

Timeline

• 86/82 BC – Rhetorica ad Herennium.^[5]
• 81–43 BC – Cicero of a narrow pass, of Corinth's isthmus and of a short treasury.^[2][5]
• c. 50 BC – Caesar of a defile.^[2][5]
• c. 1200 – English anguish, through Old French.^[7]

Meanings

Noun

1. narrowness, lack of room; crowding.^[2][1]
2. A narrow place: a pass, defile, isthmus, strait.^[2][1]
3. Restriction; shortness (of time); shortage (of money or supplies), poverty.^[2][1]
4. Difficulty, distress;^[1][6] (Ecclesiastical Latin) anguish;^[1][6] (plural) tribulations, trials.^[1][6]

Word family

• angustiō

Related words

• angustus
• angustiōsus
• angō
• angor
• English anguish

References

1. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k 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. ^ 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 Stelten, Leo F. (1995), Dictionary of Ecclesiastical Latin, Peabody, Mass.: Hendrickson
7. ^ a b Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com