decoctor

Forms

dēcoctor m (genitive dēcoctōris); third declension^[1]

Etymology

It is from Latin dēcoquō (“to boil down; to become insolvent”) + -tor.^[2][3][1] The verb, a compound of dē- and coquō (“to cook”),^[2] was used of a debtor who could not pay.^[2] coquō goes back to Proto-Italic *kʷekʷe/o- and Proto-Indo-European *pekʷ-e/o- (“to cook”).^[4]

A Latin gloss explains the name by the way gold shrinks when it is boiled down: the debtor “boils down” the sum he owes.^[3]

Earliest recorded meaning

The TLL records it from Cicero and Catullus on.^[3] In the second speech against Catiline, Cicero describes an army gathered from rural decoctores, men ruined by debt.^[3][2]

Semantic evolution

In the Philippics Cicero recalls the seats the Roscian law set apart for decoctores, those who had lost their fortune through bad luck rather than their own fault.^[3] Catullus calls a woman “the mistress of the bankrupt of Formiae”.^[3][5] Seneca uses it of a defaulter to whom no one would lend money.^[3][5]

Later it is used of squandering others' property, as in decoctor pecuniae publicae in the Theodosian Code, and in the Historia Augusta of men who had wasted their own goods.^[5][3] Ennodius uses it once, figuratively, of something that burns up the vices by fire.^[3]

Timeline

• 81–43 BC – Cicero uses it of insolvent men in the Catilinarians and the Philippics.^[3][6]
• 81/79–52/50 BC – Catullus uses it as an insult.^[3][6]
• 4 BC–65 AD – Seneca uses it of a defaulting debtor.^[3][6]
• before 513 AD – Ennodius uses it of something that burns away.^[3][6]

Meanings

Noun

1. An insolvent person, a defaulting debtor, a bankrupt.^[2][5][3]
2. (Late Latin) A spendthrift, one who squanders his own or public property.^[5][3]
3. (Late Latin) One who burns away (figurative, in Ennodius).^[3]

References

1. ^ a b c d Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e Glare, P. G. W., ed. (2012), Oxford Latin Dictionary, 2nd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
3. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p Thesaurus linguae Latinae (1900–), Leipzig: Teubner; Berlin: De Gruyter; open-access ed., Munich: Bayerische Akademie der Wissenschaften
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 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