convergo

Forms

convergō (present infinitive convergere); third conjugation, no perfect or supine stems, third person-only in the passive^[1]

Etymology

It is formed from Latin con- + vergō (“to bend, turn, incline”).^[1][2][3]

Earliest recorded meaning

The verb is first found in Isidore of Seville (about 560–636), in the Etymologiae, of the point in the middle of a circle “to which all things converge”, which the Greeks call the centre.^[2][4][5][6]

Semantic evolution

Isidore uses it twice, both times of the centre of a circle: in geometry, and in describing the pair of compasses.^[2][5] It remained a rare Late Latin word,^[4][1] until New Latin made it a mathematical term, in the passive, “to converge”.^[1] English took converge from it in the 1690s, “to tend to meet in a point or line”.^[3]

Timeline

• c. 560–636 AD – Isidore of Seville uses it of all lines meeting in the centre of a circle.^[2][5][6]
• 1690s – Borrowed into English as converge.^[3]

Meanings

Verb

1. (Late Latin) To incline together; to converge (on a point).^[4][2][1]
2. (New Latin, mathematics, passive) To converge.^[1]

References

1. ^ a b c d e f Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e Thesaurus linguae Latinae (1900–), Leipzig: Teubner; Berlin: De Gruyter; open-access ed., Munich: Bayerische Akademie der Wissenschaften
3. ^ a b c Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
4. ^ a b c Lewis, Charlton T.; Short, Charles (1879), A Latin Dictionary, Oxford: Clarendon Press
5. ^ a b c Isidore of Seville, Etymologiarum sive Originum libri XX, ed. W. M. Lindsay (Oxford, 1911).
6. ^ a b Köbler, Gerhard (2010), Lateinisches Abkunfts- und Wirkungswörterbuch für Altertum und Mittelalter, online ed., koeblergerhard.de