concredo

Forms

concrēdō (present infinitive concrēdere, perfect active concrēdidī, supine concrēditum); third conjugation^[1] Plautus has the perfect concrēduī and the future perfect concrēduō.^[2]

Etymology

It is from Latin con- + crēdō (“to entrust, believe”).^[2][1][3] De Vaan traces crēdō to Proto-Italic *krezde/o- and Proto-Indo-European *ḱred-dʰeh₁- (“to place in the heart, believe”).^[4] Cognate with Old Irish creitid (“to believe”) and Sanskrit श्रद्धा (śraddhā́-, “confidence, devotion”).^[4]

Earliest recorded meaning

It is frequent in Plautus,^[3] as in the Aulularia: “this man's grandfather entrusted to me a treasure of gold”, mihi avus huius concredidit thesaurum auri.^[5]

Semantic evolution

It means to entrust for safe keeping, to consign or commit, and to confide a secret:^[2][5] Plautus has gold entrusted to someone's good faith and a matter to someone's silence.^[5] The TLL finds it only once each in Catullus, Virgil, Horace's Satires and Propertius, twice in Cicero, then in Columella, Silius and later authors.^[3] Cicero speaks of entrusting one's property and reputation to someone,^[5] Catullus of entrusting a son to the winds, Horace of confiding trifles, and Columella of committing tender vines to a warm climate.^[5] Lewis & Short note that Quintilian never uses it.^[5] In Church Latin it is to entrust, consign or commit.^[6]

Timeline

• c. 250–184 BC – Plautus, of entrusting gold.^[5][3][7]
• 81–43 BC – Cicero, of entrusting property and reputation.^[5][7]
• 81/79–52/50 BC – Catullus, of a son entrusted to the winds.^[5][7]
• 1st century AD – Columella, of vines.^[5][7]

Meanings

Verb

1. To entrust for safe keeping, to consign, commit.^[2][5][1][6]
2. To confide a secret.^[2][1]

Related words

• crēdō
• commendō

References

1. ^ a b c d e f Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e Glare, P. G. W., ed. (2012), Oxford Latin Dictionary, 2nd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
3. ^ a b c d Thesaurus linguae Latinae (1900–), Leipzig: Teubner; Berlin: De Gruyter; open-access ed., Munich: Bayerische Akademie der Wissenschaften
4. ^ a b 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 f g h i j k Lewis, Charlton T.; Short, Charles (1879), A Latin Dictionary, Oxford: Clarendon Press
6. ^ a b Stelten, Leo F. (1995), Dictionary of Ecclesiastical Latin, Peabody, Mass.: Hendrickson
7. ^ a b c d Köbler, Gerhard (2010), Lateinisches Abkunfts- und Wirkungswörterbuch für Altertum und Mittelalter, online ed., koeblergerhard.de