concumbo

Forms

concumbō (present infinitive concumbere, perfect active concubuī, supine concubitum); third conjugation, impersonal in the passive^[1]

Etymology

It is from Latin con- + *cumbō, a form of cubō (“to lie”) also seen in the compounds accumbō, incumbō and prōcumbō.^[2][1][3]

Earliest recorded meaning

Terence has someone ask whether people say a woman slept with him two months later.^[4]

Semantic evolution

It is to lie together for sexual intercourse, with cum or the dative.^[2][4] Cicero uses it in rhetorical and philosophical works, and Ovid of Egeria lying with Numa.^[4] The TLL finds it absent from Virgil, Horace and Livy, but frequent in Tibullus, Propertius and Ovid.^[3] Propertius also uses it literally of cattle lying down together, and Juvenal has people make love in Greek.^[4] Augustine discusses a woman overpowered who consents to the man with no will of her own.^[4] The present forms are rare, the perfect common.^[4] Church Latin glosses it to lie with.^[5]

Timeline

• 190–159 BC – Terence.^[4]
• 81–43 BC – Cicero.^[4]
• 43 BC–18 AD – Ovid.^[4][3]
• 354–430 AD – Augustine.^[4]

Meanings

Verb

1. To lie with, sleep with, have sexual intercourse.^[2][4][1][5]
2. To lie down together.^[4]

Word family

• concubitus
• concubius

Related words

• cubō
• concubina

References

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