como

Forms

cōmō (present infinitive cōmere, perfect active cōmpsī, supine cōmptum); third conjugation^[1] Lewis & Short give the perfect also as cōmsī and the supine as cōmtum.^[2]

Etymology

It is from Latin con- (“together”) + emō (“to take”), “to take together”.^[3][2][4][1] The TLL compares dēmō and dirimō, and the grammarian Eutyches explained it from cōnsūmō and coemō.^[4] De Vaan traces emō to Proto-Italic *eme/o- (“to take”) and Proto-Indo-European *h₁em-e/o- (“to take”).^[5]

Earliest recorded meaning

The OLD's first example is Lucretius, who uses it of things united or combined.^[3][2]

Semantic evolution

From uniting it came to mean to make beautiful, dress or adorn, as Statius' neck and cheeks adorned, and in speech or writing to embellish, as Cicero says Lucilius adorned a passage with much charm.^[3] Its commonest sense is to dress or arrange hair: a poem in the Tibullan collection says that whether she lets her hair down or arranges it, she is to be revered.^[3] Fronto uses it of trimming bushes, and Statius of setting out arms in order.^[3] Döderlein notes that it denotes ornament as something small and effeminate, often with blame, unlike ōrnō.^[6] Church Latin glosses it to comb, adorn the hair.^[7]

Timeline

• 96–55 BC – Lucretius of combining things.^[3][8]
• 81–43 BC – Cicero of embellishing a passage.^[3][8]
• c. 45–96 AD – Statius of adorning neck and cheeks.^[3][8]
• 100–170 AD – Fronto of trimming bushes.^[3][8]

Meanings

Verb

1. To unite, combine; to frame, construct.^[3][2][1]
2. To make beautiful, dress, adorn; to embellish in speech or writing.^[3][2][1]
3. To dress, arrange or comb the hair; to trim bushes.^[3][7][1]
4. To arrange in order, set out.^[3]

Word family

• comptor
• comptulus
• cōmptus
• incōmptus

Related words

• emō
• dēmō

Usage notes

A separate verb comō, -āre, “to have hair”, from coma, is found as a finite verb only in late writers such as Paulinus of Nola, though its participle comāns, hairy, is common in poetry.^[2] A non-literary adverb cōmō, a form of quōmodo “how”, is securely attested from the mid-1st century AD.^[1]

References

1. ^ a b c d e f g h Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f Lewis, Charlton T.; Short, Charles (1879), A Latin Dictionary, Oxford: Clarendon Press
3. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m Glare, P. G. W., ed. (2012), Oxford Latin Dictionary, 2nd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
4. ^ a b Thesaurus linguae Latinae (1900–), Leipzig: Teubner; Berlin: De Gruyter; open-access ed., Munich: Bayerische Akademie der Wissenschaften
5. ^ de Vaan, Michiel (2008), Etymological Dictionary of Latin and the other Italic Languages, Leiden Indo-European Etymological Dictionary Series 7, Leiden; Boston: Brill
6. ^ Döderlein, Ludwig (1874), Döderlein’s Hand-book of Latin Synonymes, tr. H. H. Arnold, Andover: W. F. Draper
7. ^ a b Stelten, Leo F. (1995), Dictionary of Ecclesiastical Latin, Peabody, Mass.: Hendrickson
8. ^ a b c d Köbler, Gerhard (2010), Lateinisches Abkunfts- und Wirkungswörterbuch für Altertum und Mittelalter, online ed., koeblergerhard.de