conticesco

Forms

conticēscō (present infinitive conticēscere, perfect active conticuī); third conjugation, no supine stem^[1] Plautus has the spelling conticīscō.^[2][3][4]

Etymology

It is formed from con- and taceō (“to be silent”) with the inchoative suffix ⟨-scō⟩.^[2][1] De Vaan traces taceō to Proto-Italic *tak-ē- (“to be silent”) and Proto-Indo-European *tHk-eh₁- (“to be silent”), comparing Umbrian taçez (“silent”), Old Norse þegja (“to be silent”) and Old High German thagēn (“to be silent”).^[5] He doubts the link with Ancient Greek πτήσσω (ptḗssō, “to duck”).^[5]

Earliest recorded meaning

Plautus has it first, in the Bacchides: “but I will fall silent, for I hear the door opening”.^[2][5][3]

Semantic evolution

It is to stop speaking or making a sound, and of sounds and speech themselves to cease, as in Cicero's promise that grateful talk will never fall silent.^[2][3] Valerius Flaccus once uses it with an object, to keep silent about.^[2] It also means to come to rest or stop working, as in Cicero's Brutus, of writings that have long been silent.^[2][1] Priscian notes that some writers, Plautus among them, used conticīscō.^[4]

Timeline

• c. 250–184 BC – Plautus of falling silent.^[2][6]
• 81–43 BC – Cicero of praise that will never fall silent and of letters that have stopped.^[2][6]
• 6th century AD – Priscian comments on the form conticīscō.^[4][6]

Meanings

Verb

1. To fall silent, stop speaking; of sounds, to cease.^[2][3][7][1]
2. To be silent about something.^[2][1]
3. To come to rest, become idle, stop working.^[2][1]

Word family

• conticinium

References

1. ^ a b c d e f g h Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k Glare, P. G. W., ed. (2012), Oxford Latin Dictionary, 2nd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
3. ^ a b c d Lewis, Charlton T.; Short, Charles (1879), A Latin Dictionary, Oxford: Clarendon Press
4. ^ a b c Thesaurus linguae Latinae (1900–), Leipzig: Teubner; Berlin: De Gruyter; open-access ed., Munich: Bayerische Akademie der Wissenschaften
5. ^ 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
6. ^ a b c Köbler, Gerhard (2010), Lateinisches Abkunfts- und Wirkungswörterbuch für Altertum und Mittelalter, online ed., koeblergerhard.de
7. ^ Stelten, Leo F. (1995), Dictionary of Ecclesiastical Latin, Peabody, Mass.: Hendrickson