comissor

Forms

cōmissor (present infinitive cōmissārī, perfect active cōmissātus sum); first conjugation, deponent^[1] The spelling cōmisor is as old in the manuscripts as cōmissor;^[2][3] later writers often have comessor.^[2][4]

Etymology

It is borrowed from Ancient Greek κωμάζω (kōmázō, “to revel, make merry”),^[1][5][6][4] from κῶμος (kômos, “revel”).^[1] The OLD only compares the Greek verb.^[3]

The spellings with ⟨comes-⟩, ⟨comis-⟩ and ⟨commess-⟩ came from false derivations, as if the verb were formed from comedō (“to eat up”), cōmis (“friendly”) or mēnsa (“table”).^[6][1][4]

Earliest recorded meaning

Plautus has it first,^[6][2] in the Mostellaria, where a character sets off to go revelling at a friend's house.^[6]

Semantic evolution

It described young people who went about after a banquet with music and dancing and ended at the house of one of their companions to drink again.^[6][2] Plautus, Terence and Livy use it with ad or in domum of going to someone's house to carouse,^[6][2] and Horace has revelling in the house of Paulus.^[2] Livy also describes men following a chariot like revellers.^[6][2]

Curtius uses it of men returning drunk and revelling from the Ocean, and Quintilian, Suetonius and Petronius have it too.^[2][6] In late writers and the Vulgate the spelling comessor became common, under the influence of the verb for eating.^[2][4]

Timeline

• c. 250–184 BC – Plautus uses it of going to revel at a friend's house.^[6][7]
• 190–159 BC – Terence uses it of letting someone in to revel.^[6][7]
• 59 BC–17 AD – Livy uses it of men following a chariot like revellers.^[6][7]
• 65–8 BC – Horace uses it in his fourth book of odes.^[2][7]
• 1st century AD – Curtius uses it of men returning drunk from the Ocean.^[2][7]

Meanings

Verb

1. To revel, carouse, make merry.^[3][6]
2. To go in a festive procession, especially to a friend's house to drink again after a banquet.^[6][2]

Word family

• cōmissābundus
• cōmissātiō
• cōmissātor
• cōmissāliter

References

1. ^ a b c d e f Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l Georges, Karl Ernst (1913–1918), Ausführliches lateinisch-deutsches Handwörterbuch, 8th ed., ed. Heinrich Georges, Hannover; Leipzig: Hahn
3. ^ a b c Glare, P. G. W., ed. (2012), Oxford Latin Dictionary, 2nd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
4. ^ a b c d Thesaurus linguae Latinae (1900–), Leipzig: Teubner; Berlin: De Gruyter; open-access ed., Munich: Bayerische Akademie der Wissenschaften
5. ^ Saalfeld, Günther Alexander (1874), Index Graecorum vocabulorum in linguam latinam translatorum, Berlin: Weidmann
6. ^ 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
7. ^ a b c d e Köbler, Gerhard (2010), Lateinisches Abkunfts- und Wirkungswörterbuch für Altertum und Mittelalter, online ed., koeblergerhard.de