crucio

Forms

cruciō (present infinitive cruciāre, perfect active cruciāvī, supine cruciātum); first conjugation^[1]

Etymology

It is from Latin crux (“cross, gallows”) + -ō.^[2][3][1] Leumann explained its suffix from the dative ⟨crucī⟩; de Vaan reconstructs Proto-Italic *kruk(-i)- for the noun, perhaps an old i-stem, and compares Celtic and Germanic words for a heap, hill or back, while doubting that they belong together.^[4] Cognate, if so, with Old Irish crúach (“heap, hill”) and Old Norse hryggr (“backbone”).^[4] A late grammarian notes that it ought to be of the fourth conjugation but is used in the first.^[3]

Earliest recorded meaning

The TLL dates it from Plautus,^[3] whose Asinaria has a woman who tortured her innocent maids.^[2]

Semantic evolution

Lewis & Short note that the sense to crucify is found only in Church Latin, as in Lactantius; otherwise it means to torture or torment.^[5] It is used of physical torture, of rough treatment of things, as Pliny the Elder's copper heated and quenched in salt and vinegar, and of pain from disease or hunger, as Plautus' traveller racked by a jolting nag and Cicero's man tormented by sleeplessness and hunger.^[2][5] Most often it is mental anguish: Terence's Chremes severely torments the young man.^[2] Church Latin glosses it torment, torture, crucify.^[6]

Timeline

• c. 250–184 BC – Plautus of torturing maids.^[2][7]
• 190–159 BC – Terence of mental torment.^[2][7]
• 81–43 BC – Cicero of torment by hunger.^[5][7]
• 23/24–79 AD – Pliny the Elder of copper treated roughly.^[2][7]

Meanings

Verb

1. To torture; intransitively, to suffer torture; of things, to treat roughly.^[2][5][1]
2. Of disease or hunger, to cause acute pain, torment.^[2][5]
3. To cause mental anguish; in the passive, to be distressed.^[2][5]
4. (Ecclesiastical Latin) To crucify.^[5][6][1]

Word family

• concruciō
• cruciābilis
• cruciābundus
• cruciāmen
• cruciāmentum
• cruciātiō
• cruciator
• cruciātus
• discruciō
• excruciō
• percruciō
• cruciābilitās

Related words

• crux

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