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aversor

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Pronunciation

  • Classical: [aːˈwɛr.sɔr][1]
  • Ecclesiastical: [aˈvɛr.sor][1]

Forms

āversor (present infinitive āversārī, perfect active āversātus sum); first conjugation, deponent[1] Plautus has the old spelling avorsor.[2][3]

Etymology

It is a frequentative from Latin āvertō (“to turn away”) + -tō, formed on the participle ⟨āvers-⟩.[2][3][1] The verb āvertō is ab- with vertō (“to turn”).[1]

Earliest recorded meaning

Plautus has it intransitively, “stay where you are, don't turn away”, and Ennius in the Annals transitively, of people who will always turn away from someone's face.[2]

Semantic evolution

It means to turn away in disgust, horror or shame, as Cicero's guilty man who hesitates, turns away and blushes, and so to recoil from or shun a person or sight.[2][4] With actions as object it means to feel aversion for, as Ovid's “I loathe her character, I love her body”, and with an infinitive to refuse to do something.[2] It also means to refuse to accept, reject, as Livy's people who rejected prayers out of shame or fear.[2] Church Latin glosses it to turn away from, avoid, repel, hate.[5]

Timeline

  • c. 250–184 BC – Plautus of turning away.[2][6]
  • 204–169 BC – Ennius of turning away from someone.[2][6]
  • 81–43 BC – Cicero of a man who turns away and blushes.[4][6]
  • 59 BC–17 AD – Livy of rejecting prayers.[2][6]

Meanings

Verb

  1. To turn away in disgust or horror, recoil.[2][4][1]
  2. To turn away from, shun.[2][5][1]
  3. To feel or express aversion for; to refuse to do something.[2][1]
  4. To refuse to accept, reject.[2][1]

Word family

  • āversābilis
  • āversātiō
  • āversātrīx

Usage notes

A separate noun āversor, āversōris, an embezzler, also from āvertō, occurs in Cicero's Verrines, where Verres is the embezzler of public money.[2][4][3][6]

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 Glare, P. G. W., ed. (2012), Oxford Latin Dictionary, 2nd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
  3. ^ a b c Thesaurus linguae Latinae (1900–), Leipzig: Teubner; Berlin: De Gruyter; open-access ed., Munich: Bayerische Akademie der Wissenschaften
  4. ^ a b c d Lewis, Charlton T.; Short, Charles (1879), A Latin Dictionary, Oxford: Clarendon Press
  5. ^ a b Stelten, Leo F. (1995), Dictionary of Ecclesiastical Latin, Peabody, Mass.: Hendrickson
  6. ^ a b c d e Köbler, Gerhard (2010), Lateinisches Abkunfts- und Wirkungswörterbuch für Altertum und Mittelalter, online ed., koeblergerhard.de