congestus

Forms

congestus m (genitive congestūs); fourth declension^[1]

Etymology

It is from Latin congerō (“to bring together, heap up”) + -tus, a fourth-declension noun of action.^[1][2][3] De Vaan lists congerō among the compounds of gerō (“to carry”), which he traces to Proto-Italic *ges-e/o- and Proto-Indo-European *h₂ǵ-es- (“to carry”).^[4]

Earliest recorded meaning

Lucretius has a great heap of sand,^[1][2] and Cicero's De divinatione grass that grew where birds had carried material together, not from human sowing.^[1][3]

Semantic evolution

Lewis & Short call it rare and mostly post-Augustan.^[5] It is the bringing together of things: Seneca speaks of greed set on piling up great wealth, and Tacitus of towns stripped by deliveries of supplies.^[1][3] It is also the heaping up of things and the heap itself: Seneca has likenesses of houses raised from heaped sand, Lucan altars of piled turf, Columella a heap of stalks and leaves, and Tacitus the city that does not stand by roofs and a heap of stones.^[1][5] Figuratively it is a great accumulation: Seneca has the concourse of things from the whole world, and Quintilian says that a wealth of matter is only a heap unless it is arranged.^[1][5]

Timeline

• 96–55 BC – Lucretius, of a heap of sand.^[1][6]
• 81–43 BC – Cicero, of birds carrying material together.^[1][6]
• 4 BC–65 AD – Seneca, of the heaping up of wealth.^[1][6]
• 98–115 AD – Tacitus, of a heap of stones.^[1][6]

Meanings

Noun

1. A bringing together, assembling; of birds, a carrying together of nest material.^[1][3]
2. A heaping up; a heap, pile, mass.^[1][5]
3. A large collection, accumulation.^[1][5]

Related words

• congerō
• gerō
• congeriēs

Usage notes

Congestus is also the participle of congerō, “heaped up, crowded together”;^[1][5] Ausonius has the comparative congestior, “fuller”.^[3]

References

1. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o Glare, P. G. W., ed. (2012), Oxford Latin Dictionary, 2nd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
2. ^ a b Thesaurus linguae Latinae (1900–), Leipzig: Teubner; Berlin: De Gruyter; open-access ed., Munich: Bayerische Akademie der Wissenschaften
3. ^ a b c d e Georges, Karl Ernst (1913–1918), Ausführliches lateinisch-deutsches Handwörterbuch, 8th ed., ed. Heinrich Georges, Hannover; Leipzig: Hahn
4. ^ 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 Lewis, Charlton T.; Short, Charles (1879), A Latin Dictionary, Oxford: Clarendon Press
6. ^ a b c d Köbler, Gerhard (2010), Lateinisches Abkunfts- und Wirkungswörterbuch für Altertum und Mittelalter, online ed., koeblergerhard.de