antefero

Forms

anteferō (present infinitive anteferre, perfect active antetulī, supine antelātum); third conjugation, suppletive^[1]

Etymology

It is from Latin ante- (“before”) + ferō (“to carry”).^[2][3][1] De Vaan traces ferō to Proto-Italic *fere/o- and Proto-Indo-European *bʰer-e/o- (“to carry”), and ante to *anti (“before, in front of”), the locative of a root noun *h₂ent- (“front”).^[4] The TLL notes that Livy never uses it and writes praeferō instead.^[3]

Earliest recorded meaning

The TLL's first examples are a fragment of the historian Coelius Antipater and a line of Varro quoted by Nonius, both of things carried in front;^[3][2] Caesar's Civil War speaks of the fasces being carried before a magistrate.^[3][2]

Semantic evolution

Its literal sense, to carry in front, stays rare;^[5][2] Tacitus uses it of the titles of laws carried before a funeral procession.^[5][2] Much more often it is figurative: Cicero uses it of anticipating what the day will bring, of placing one thing before another in time, and above all of preferring one person or thing to another, as when he sets Demosthenes above all other orators.^[2][5] The construction is with an accusative and a dative of what is ranked lower.^[2]

Timeline

• 81–43 BC – Cicero of anticipating events and of preferring one thing to another.^[2][6]
• c. 50 BC – Caesar of the fasces carried in front.^[2][6]
• 98–115 AD – Tacitus of the titles of laws carried before a funeral.^[5][6]

Meanings

Verb

1. To carry in front of, or in advance of.^[2][5][1]
2. To bring forward in time, anticipate; to place before in time.^[2][1]
3. To give precedence to, prefer, rank above another.^[2][5][1]

References

1. ^ a b c d e f g Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l Glare, P. G. W., ed. (2012), Oxford Latin Dictionary, 2nd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
3. ^ a b c d 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 e f Lewis, Charlton T.; Short, Charles (1879), A Latin Dictionary, Oxford: Clarendon Press
6. ^ a b c Köbler, Gerhard (2010), Lateinisches Abkunfts- und Wirkungswörterbuch für Altertum und Mittelalter, online ed., koeblergerhard.de