avocamentum

Forms

āvocāmentum n (genitive āvocāmentī); second declension^[1]

Etymology

It is from Latin āvocō (“to call away, divert”) + -mentum.^[2][1][3] The verb is formed from ab- (“away”) and vocō (“to call”).^[4][1]

Earliest recorded meaning

Its first author is Pliny the Younger, who writes in his letters that grief has taken every diversion away from him.^[5][4]

Semantic evolution

In Classical and Late Latin it was a diversion or recreation that takes the mind off pain or toil, in Pliny the Younger's Panegyric, Apuleius, Lactantius and Arnobius.^[5][4] Caelius Aurelianus recommends such diversions of the mind to relieve patients, and Sidonius Apollinaris writes of wholesome diversions.^[6] Augustine speaks of the diversions of the soul.^[4]

In medieval Latin it meant a distraction of the mind: Lampert of Hersfeld writes of minds weighed down by grief being refreshed by such a diversion.^[7] Neo-Latin writers kept it: Erasmus, in a letter of 1515, eased the trouble of an illness with it.^[8]

Timeline

• c. 125–175 AD – Apuleius uses it for a diversion.^[4][9]
• c. 250–317 AD – Lactantius uses it in the plural.^[5][4][9]
• 5th century AD – Caelius Aurelianus recommends diversions of the mind for the sick.^[6][9]
• 1515 – Erasmus uses it of a diversion from illness.^[8]

Meanings

Noun

1. A distraction, diversion from pain or trouble.^[2][5]
2. Recreation, relaxation.^[5][10]

Related words

• avocatio

References

1. ^ a b c d e Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b Glare, P. G. W., ed. (2012), Oxford Latin Dictionary, 2nd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
3. ^ Bianchi, Rossella; Lelli, Olga (2014), VOLI: Vocabolario di latino, Florence: Le Monnier
4. ^ a b c d e f Georges, Karl Ernst (1913–1918), Ausführliches lateinisch-deutsches Handwörterbuch, 8th ed., ed. Heinrich Georges, Hannover; Leipzig: Hahn
5. ^ a b c d e Lewis, Charlton T.; Short, Charles (1879), A Latin Dictionary, Oxford: Clarendon Press
6. ^ a b Thesaurus linguae Latinae (1900–), Leipzig: Teubner; Berlin: De Gruyter; open-access ed., Munich: Bayerische Akademie der Wissenschaften
7. ^ Mittellateinisches Wörterbuch bis zum ausgehenden 13. Jahrhundert (1967–), Munich: C. H. Beck; Bayerische Akademie der Wissenschaften
8. ^ a b Ramminger, Johann, Neulateinische Wortliste: Ein Wörterbuch des Lateinischen von Petrarca bis 1700, www.neulatein.de
9. ^ a b c Köbler, Gerhard (2010), Lateinisches Abkunfts- und Wirkungswörterbuch für Altertum und Mittelalter, online ed., koeblergerhard.de
10. ^ Gaffiot, Félix (2016), Dictionnaire latin-français, new ed. by Gérard Gréco et al. (Gaffiot 2016), online ed.