commissura

Forms

commissūra f (genitive commissūrae); first declension^[1]

Etymology

It is from Latin committō (“to join, connect”) + -ūra, with the regular change of /tt/ to /ss/.^[2][1][3] De Vaan lists that verb among the compounds of mittō (“to send”), which he traces to Proto-Italic *meit-e/o- and Proto-Indo-European *m(e)ith2- (“to exchange, remove”).^[4]

Earliest recorded meaning

The OLD's earliest quotation is from Cato's De agricultura,^[2] of the joint of a rope, for which three feet are reckoned.^[5][2]

Semantic evolution

Cicero uses it of the wonderful joints of the bones and of the supple joints of the fingers,^[2][5] and Columella of the joint in a plant where new wood grows.^[2] Pliny the Elder uses it of the intersections of orbits, Seneca of the crossings in a knot and of the boundary between the colours of a rainbow.^[2] Quintilian applies it to the meeting of the end of one word with the start of the next, where consonants clash.^[2] In medieval Latin it is a carpenter's scarf joint.^[6]

Timeline

• 234–149 BC – Cato uses it of the joint of a rope.^[2][5][7]
• 81–43 BC – Cicero uses it of the joints of bones and fingers.^[2][5][7]
• 1st century AD – Columella uses it of plants.^[2][7]
• c. 35–95/96 AD – Quintilian uses it of the junction of words.^[2][7]

Meanings

Noun

1. A joint, juncture or seam where two parts meet; a joint in the body or in a plant.^[2][5]
2. An intersection; a crossing in a knot; a dividing line.^[2]
3. (rhetoric) The meeting of the end of one word with the beginning of the next.^[2]
4. (Ecclesiastical Latin) A patch.^[8]
5. (Medieval Latin) A scarf joint in carpentry.^[6]

Word family

• commissuralis

Related words

• committō
• English commissure

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 Glare, P. G. W., ed. (2012), Oxford Latin Dictionary, 2nd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
3. ^ Thesaurus linguae Latinae (1900–), Leipzig: Teubner; Berlin: De Gruyter; open-access ed., Munich: Bayerische Akademie der Wissenschaften
4. ^ 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 e Lewis, Charlton T.; Short, Charles (1879), A Latin Dictionary, Oxford: Clarendon Press
6. ^ a b Niermeyer, J. F. (1976), Mediae Latinitatis Lexicon Minus, Leiden: Brill
7. ^ a b c d Köbler, Gerhard (2010), Lateinisches Abkunfts- und Wirkungswörterbuch für Altertum und Mittelalter, online ed., koeblergerhard.de
8. ^ Stelten, Leo F. (1995), Dictionary of Ecclesiastical Latin, Peabody, Mass.: Hendrickson