Etymologically
Log in

condensus

This is the current revision of this entry, as edited by bogdan on 20 October 2026 at 13:23. This address is a permanent link to this version.
Changes in this edit History

Pronunciation

  • Classical: [kɔnˈdẽː.sʊs][1]
  • Ecclesiastical: [konˈdɛn.sus][1]

Forms

condēnsus (feminine condēnsa, neuter condēnsum); first/second-declension adjective[1]

Etymology

It is from Latin con- + dēnsus (“thick, dense”).[2][1][3] De Vaan traces dēnsus to Proto-Indo-European *d(ē̆)ns-o- (“thick”), cognate with Ancient Greek δασύς (dasús, “hairy, thick with leaves”), and dates the compound from Lucretius.[4]

Earliest recorded meaning

Lucretius has it first and most often,[4][5] of the like parts that fill out a body in a close-packed column, and of clouds that cannot be of so dense a body.[2]

Semantic evolution

The TLL counts seven instances in Lucretius, one in the Bellum Africum, two each in Virgil and Livy, three in Pliny the Elder and later ones,[3] and Lewis & Short note that it is mostly poetic and absent from Cicero.[5] It is thick or dense, as the Bellum Africum has an old olive grove thick with trees, Livy a close battle line and a valley thick with trees, and Pliny a leafy tree.[2][5][6] Of many people or things it is crowded together: Virgil has ships crowded on the shore and doves huddled together, and the Bellum Africum foot soldiers running out from close-packed squadrons.[2][5] Apuleius uses it of the crowded strokes of a strange script.[2] Church Latin has “leafy, thickly covered”.[7]

Timeline

  • 96–55 BC – Lucretius, of close-packed atoms and clouds.[2][4][8]
  • 70–19 BC – Virgil, of ships crowded on the shore.[2][8]
  • 59 BC–17 AD – Livy, of a close battle line.[2][8]
  • 23/24–79 AD – Pliny the Elder, of a leafy tree.[2][8]

Meanings

Adjective

  1. Closely packed, thick, dense; thickly covered.[2][5][1]
  2. Of people or things, crowded, packed together.[2][1]
  3. Of packing, close, coherent.[2]
  4. (Ecclesiastical Latin) Leafy.[7]

Word family

  • condēnsātiō
  • condēnsō

References

  1. ^ a b c d e f Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
  2. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l Glare, P. G. W., ed. (2012), Oxford Latin Dictionary, 2nd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
  3. ^ a b Thesaurus linguae Latinae (1900–), Leipzig: Teubner; Berlin: De Gruyter; open-access ed., Munich: Bayerische Akademie der Wissenschaften
  4. ^ a b c 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 Lewis, Charlton T.; Short, Charles (1879), A Latin Dictionary, Oxford: Clarendon Press
  6. ^ Georges, Karl Ernst (1913–1918), Ausführliches lateinisch-deutsches Handwörterbuch, 8th ed., ed. Heinrich Georges, Hannover; Leipzig: Hahn
  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