compresso

Forms

compressō (present infinitive compressāre, perfect active compressāvī, supine compressātum); first conjugation^[1]

Etymology

It is a frequentative verb from Latin comprimō (“to press together”), formed with -tō on its participle compressus¹.^[2][1] The TLL compares pressō as well.^[3]

Earliest recorded meaning

It first appears in the Old Latin Bible as quoted by Tertullian in the Scorpiace (Judges 2:15), “et compressati sunt valde”, “and they were sorely oppressed”, where the Vulgate has another verb.^[3][4]

Semantic evolution

The verb stayed rare and late.^[2] Besides the Bible passage, the Horace commentator Porphyrio uses it, in the sense of pressing hard.^[2][3]

Timeline

• c. 160–220 AD – Tertullian quotes the Old Latin Bible with it.^[3][4]
• 2nd half of the 2nd century AD – Porphyrio uses it in his commentary on Horace.^[2][4]

Meanings

Verb

1. (Late Latin) To press hard; to oppress.^[2][3]

References

1. ^ a b c d Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e Lewis, Charlton T.; Short, Charles (1879), A Latin Dictionary, Oxford: Clarendon 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 c Köbler, Gerhard (2010), Lateinisches Abkunfts- und Wirkungswörterbuch für Altertum und Mittelalter, online ed., koeblergerhard.de