defundo

Forms

dēfundō (present infinitive dēfundere, perfect active dēfūdī, supine dēfūsum); third conjugation^[1]

Etymology

It is from Latin dē- + fundō¹ (“to pour”).^[2][1][3] De Vaan traces fundō¹ to Proto-Italic *χund- and the nasal present Proto-Indo-European *ǵʰu-n-d- (“to pour”);^[4] cognate with Ancient Greek χέω (khéō, “to pour”).^[4]

Earliest recorded meaning

Cato says to pour off the water from boiled cabbage.^[2][5] The TLL finds it from Lucilius and Virgil on in literature.^[3]

Semantic evolution

Lewis & Short note that it is very rare before Augustus and absent from Cicero and Caesar.^[5] It is to pour out of a vessel: Lucilius has wine poured from a full jar, Horace a man sparing to pour out wine, and Celsus egg white and yolk poured into a dish.^[2][5] It is used of libations, wine poured from bowls in Horace and offerings to Mercury in Valerius Maximus.^[2][5] Poetically it is to pour down: Horace's Plenty pours the fruits of Italy from her horn, Seneca has a spring pouring its waters, Statius the south wind rain, and Silius blood.^[2][6] Ovid has anger poured out in tears, and Petronius words poured from the breast.^[2][5] It is also to empty a vessel, as Juvenal's windows emptying basins.^[2][6] Vegetius uses it of pouring a potion into an animal.^[6] Church Latin has “pour out”.^[7]

Timeline

• 234–149 BC – Cato, of pouring off water.^[2][8]
• c. 180–102 BC – Lucilius, of pouring wine.^[2][8]
• 65–8 BC – Horace, of wine and libations.^[2][8]
• c. 67–c. 127 AD – Juvenal, of emptying basins.^[2][8]

Meanings

Verb

1. To pour out or down; to pour off; to pour a libation.^[2][5][1]
2. To discharge, shed;^[2][5] (figurative) to pour out words.^[2][5]
3. To empty (a vessel).^[2][1]
4. To wet by pouring.^[2][1]

Word family

• dēfūsiō

Related words

• fundō¹
• effundō
• diffundō
• infundō

References

1. ^ a b c d e f g Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p Glare, P. G. W., ed. (2012), Oxford Latin Dictionary, 2nd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
3. ^ a b 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 h Lewis, Charlton T.; Short, Charles (1879), A Latin Dictionary, Oxford: Clarendon Press
6. ^ a b c Georges, Karl Ernst (1913–1918), Ausführliches lateinisch-deutsches Handwörterbuch, 8th ed., ed. Heinrich Georges, Hannover; Leipzig: Hahn
7. ^ Stelten, Leo F. (1995), Dictionary of Ecclesiastical Latin, Peabody, Mass.: Hendrickson
8. ^ a b c d Köbler, Gerhard (2010), Lateinisches Abkunfts- und Wirkungswörterbuch für Altertum und Mittelalter, online ed., koeblergerhard.de