attondeo

Forms

attondeō (present infinitive attondēre, perfect active attondī, supine attōnsum); second conjugation^[1] The spelling adtondeō also occurs.^[2][3] A perfect infinitive attodisse is read, uncertainly, in the Catalepton.^[2][3]

Etymology

It is from Latin ad- + tondeō (“to shear”).^[2][1][3] De Vaan traces tondeō to Proto-Italic *tond-eje- and Proto-Indo-European *tond-eie- (“to shear”); a link with the root *temh₁- (“to cut”) is suggested by the meaning but cannot be proven.^[4] Cognate with Old Irish teinnid (“to break, cut”) and Ancient Greek τένδω (téndō, “to gnaw at”).^[4]

Earliest recorded meaning

Its first author is Plautus, who uses it in the colloquial sense of fleecing someone: in the Bacchides a character complains is mē scelus aurō usque attondit, “that scoundrel keeps fleecing me of my gold”.^[2][5]

Semantic evolution

Plautus plays on the literal sense in the Captivi, asking whether a man will shear his victim close or only “through the comb”, and in the Epidicus he uses it of rods that would give someone a “trimming”, a thrashing.^[2][6] The literal sense, to clip hair close, appears in Celsus, who recommends a closely shorn head, and in Apuleius, who has someone clipping goatskins with scissors.^[2] Cicero uses it figuratively of the glory of the Spartans being shorn.^[2][5]

Virgil uses it of goats cropping tender shrubs and of a farmer pruning a vine, and Lucan of a field cropped bare by teeth;^[2] Pliny the Elder too uses it of vines.^[2] Lewis and Short call it rare and mostly poetic.^[7] The Vulgate has the future attondent in Ezekiel.^[3][7]

Timeline

• c. 250–184 BC – Plautus uses it of fleecing someone of money.^[2][8]
• 81–43 BC – Cicero uses it figuratively of the glory of the Spartans.^[2][8]
• 70–19 BC – Virgil uses it of goats cropping shrubs and of pruning a vine.^[2][8]
• 14–37 AD – Celsus uses it of a closely shorn head.^[2][8]
• c. 125–175 AD – Apuleius uses it of clipping goatskins.^[2][8]

Meanings

Verb

1. To clip close, shear (hair, the head).^[2][7]
2. (colloquial) To fleece, strip of money; to thrash.^[2][5]
3. Of animals, to crop, browse.^[2][5]
4. To prune, trim (a vine).^[2][7]

Word family

• attōnsus

Related words

• dētondeō
• intondeō
• praetondeō
• tondeō

References

1. ^ a b c d Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r 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. ^ a b 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 Conte, Gian Biagio; Pianezzola, Emilio; Ranucci, Giuliano (2010), il Latino: Vocabolario della lingua latina, 3rd ed., Florence: Le Monnier
6. ^ Georges, Karl Ernst (1913–1918), Ausführliches lateinisch-deutsches Handwörterbuch, 8th ed., ed. Heinrich Georges, Hannover; Leipzig: Hahn
7. ^ a b c d Lewis, Charlton T.; Short, Charles (1879), A Latin Dictionary, Oxford: Clarendon Press
8. ^ a b c d e Köbler, Gerhard (2010), Lateinisches Abkunfts- und Wirkungswörterbuch für Altertum und Mittelalter, online ed., koeblergerhard.de