arieto

Forms

arietō (present infinitive arietāre, perfect active arietāvī, supine arietātum); first conjugation^[1] Virgil, Valerius Flaccus and Silius scan it in three syllables, ārietat.^[2][3]

Etymology

It is from Latin ariēs (“ram”) + -ō.^[2][1][4] De Vaan traces ariēs to Proto-Italic *a/eriēt- and Proto-Indo-European *h₁r-i-(e)t- (“a domestic animal”), cognate with Ancient Greek ἔριφος (ériphos, “kid”) and Old Irish heirp (“she-goat, doe”).^[5]

Earliest recorded meaning

Plautus has it first, in the Truculentus: “who is that battering our house so violently?”^[2][3]

Semantic evolution

It is to strike violently like a ram, and in the passive with inter sē to strike together.^[2] Accius has an animal charging at the speaker with its horns, in me arietare, a line Cicero quotes.^[2][3] Lewis & Short note that it is poetic or post-Augustan prose, and especially frequent in Seneca:^[3] Seneca has weapons and teeth clashing together, things that cannot collide, and the warning that one must slip, stumble and fall.^[2][3] Curtius has falling to the ground, and Pliny the Elder roofs clashing with opposite blows.^[3] Figuratively Seneca uses it of a mind troubled by something unaccustomed.^[3][1]

Timeline

• c. 250–184 BC – Plautus, of battering a house.^[2][6]
• 170–c. 90 BC – Accius, of an animal butting.^[2][6]
• 70–19 BC – Virgil, in three syllables.^[2][6]
• 4 BC–65 AD – Seneca, of clashing weapons and of stumbling.^[2][3][6]

Meanings

Verb

1. (transitive) To strike violently, batter, ram;^[2][3][1] (passive, with inter sē) to strike together.^[2][3][1]
2. (intransitive) To charge or butt against.^[2][3]
3. (intransitive) To collide.^[2]
4. (intransitive) To stumble, totter.^[2][3][1]
5. (figurative) To disturb, harass.^[3][1]

Word family

• arietātiō

Related words

• ariēs
• arietārius
• arietīnus

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 l m n o Glare, P. G. W., ed. (2012), Oxford Latin Dictionary, 2nd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
3. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m 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. ^ de Vaan, Michiel (2008), Etymological Dictionary of Latin and the other Italic Languages, Leiden Indo-European Etymological Dictionary Series 7, Leiden; Boston: Brill
6. ^ a b c d Köbler, Gerhard (2010), Lateinisches Abkunfts- und Wirkungswörterbuch für Altertum und Mittelalter, online ed., koeblergerhard.de