comprecor

Forms

comprecor (present infinitive comprecārī); first conjugation, deponent, no perfect or supine stems^[1] It is also spelled conprecor.^[2][3]

Etymology

It is from Latin con- + precor (“to pray”).^[2][3][1] Wiktionary traces precor to Proto-Indo-European *preḱ- (“to ask”).^[1]

Earliest recorded meaning

The TLL finds it in poets from Plautus on;^[3] in the Amphitruo a woman is told she should have prayed to Jupiter with incense or salted meal, and in the Miles gloriosus someone is sent inside to pray.^[2][4][5]

Semantic evolution

Terence uses it with the gods as object,^[5][6] and Catullus uses it of calling on the faith of the gods.^[2][5] Lewis and Short call it mostly early and rare, and absent from Cicero.^[7] Among prose writers it appears from Seneca on:^[3] in the Medea the crowd of the silent dead and the gods of the underworld are invoked, and in a letter he speaks of people who pray for death for themselves.^[2][6] Apuleius uses it of invoking all the gods.^[5] Glossaries explain it as “they wish”.^[3]

Timeline

• c. 250–184 BC – Plautus uses it of praying to Jupiter.^[2][8]
• 190–159 BC – Terence uses it of praying to the gods.^[5][8]
• 81/79–52/50 BC – Catullus uses it of invoking the gods.^[2][8]
• 4 BC–65 AD – Seneca uses it in the Medea and the letters.^[2][8]

Meanings

Verb

1. To pray to, invoke, supplicate (the gods).^[2][7]
2. To pray for something; to pray that.^[2][6]
3. (with dative or absolute) To pray, say one's prayers.^[2][4]

Word family

• comprecātiō

Related words

• precor

References

1. ^ a b c Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k Glare, P. G. W., ed. (2012), Oxford Latin Dictionary, 2nd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
3. ^ a b c d e Thesaurus linguae Latinae (1900–), Leipzig: Teubner; Berlin: De Gruyter; open-access ed., Munich: Bayerische Akademie der Wissenschaften
4. ^ a b Conte, Gian Biagio; Pianezzola, Emilio; Ranucci, Giuliano (2010), il Latino: Vocabolario della lingua latina, 3rd ed., Florence: Le Monnier
5. ^ a b c d e Georges, Karl Ernst (1913–1918), Ausführliches lateinisch-deutsches Handwörterbuch, 8th ed., ed. Heinrich Georges, Hannover; Leipzig: Hahn
6. ^ a b c Gaffiot, Félix (2016), Dictionnaire latin-français, new ed. by Gérard Gréco et al. (Gaffiot 2016), online ed.
7. ^ a b Lewis, Charlton T.; Short, Charles (1879), A Latin Dictionary, Oxford: Clarendon Press
8. ^ a b c d Köbler, Gerhard (2010), Lateinisches Abkunfts- und Wirkungswörterbuch für Altertum und Mittelalter, online ed., koeblergerhard.de