Etymologically
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comissor

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Pronunciation

  • Classical: [koːˈmɪs.sɔr][1]
  • Ecclesiastical: [koˈmis.sor][1]

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

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