conductio

Forms

conductiō f (genitive conductiōnis); third declension^[1]

Etymology

It is from Latin condūcō (“to bring together; to hire”) + -tiō.^[2][1] The verb is made from con- and dūcō (“to lead”).^[3]

Earliest recorded meaning

Cicero is its first author, both for the taking of a lease and for the bringing together of the premisses of an argument.^[2][4][5]

Semantic evolution

The common Classical sense is a hiring or lease: Livy uses it of farming the public revenues,^[6][2] and in Roman law locātiō et conductiō, letting and hiring, was one contract, which Gaius calls proxima ēmptiōnī et venditiōnī “very close to buying and selling”.^[2][4] In rhetoric Cicero and Marius Victorinus use it of drawing the parts of an argument together, a recapitulation.^[2][4][6]

Caelius Aurelianus made it a medical word for a spasm or convulsion, the Greek spasmos, from the drawing together of the muscles or sinews.^[4][6] Medieval Latin used it of renting, contracts, the hiring of a hired man and the raising of troops.^[5] English conduction meant “a leading” when it was borrowed in the 1540s, from French and Latin.^[3]

Timeline

• 81–43 BC – Cicero uses it of a lease and of an argument's premisses.^[2][4][5]
• 59 BC–17 AD – Livy uses it of the farming of public revenues.^[6][2][5]
• 140–180 AD – Gaius treats locātiō et conductiō as a contract.^[4][5]
• 5th century AD – Caelius Aurelianus uses it of a spasm.^[4][6][5]
• 1540s – English borrows conduction.^[3]

Meanings

Noun

1. (law) The taking of a lease, hiring, renting.^[2][6]
2. (rhetoric) A bringing together of the premisses of an argument; a recapitulation.^[2][4]
3. (medicine) A spasm, convulsion.^[6][4][1]
4. (Medieval Latin) A contract; the hiring of workers or soldiers.^[5]

Related words

• locātiō
• conductor
• English conduction

References

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