detrecto

Forms

dētrectō (present infinitive dētrectāre, perfect active dētrectāvī, supine dētrectātum); first conjugation^[1] Manuscripts and editors divide between dētrectō and dētractō; both spellings are common.^[2][3][4]

Etymology

It is from Latin dē- (“down, away”) + tractō (“to handle, drag about”).^[2][1] The TLL compares both dētrahō (“to pull off”) and tractō.^[4] De Vaan derives tractō from tractus, the participle of trahō (“to drag”), which he traces to Proto-Italic *traχe/o-.^[5] Festus explained it as to handle badly.^[4]

Earliest recorded meaning

The OLD's first example is Caesar's Gallic War, of people who should have no refuge for evading military service.^[2] Lewis & Short note that Cicero does not use it.^[3]

Semantic evolution

Its main sense is to refuse to undertake or undergo something, decline or evade, especially military service, and with an infinitive in the jurists to refuse to do something.^[2][3] From there it means to speak or write slightingly of, to disparage or belittle, as Ovid's “it is not my way to belittle good deeds”.^[2][3] Gellius uses it of reducing or depreciating, of soils that can impair or improve the nature of trees.^[2] Church Latin glosses it to speak against, disparage, refuse, decline.^[6]

Timeline

• c. 50 BC – Caesar of evading military service.^[2][7]
• 43 BC–18 AD – Ovid of belittling good deeds.^[2][7]
• c. 165 AD – Gellius of impairing the nature of trees.^[2][7]
• before 223 AD – Ulpian of refusing to perform a public duty.^[2][7]

Meanings

Verb

1. To refuse to undertake or undergo, decline, recoil from, evade; with an infinitive, to refuse to.^[2][3][1]
2. To speak or write slightingly of, disparage, belittle.^[2][3][6][1]
3. To reduce, depreciate.^[2]

Word family

• dētrectātiō
• dētrectātor

Related words

• tractō
• trahō

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 k l m Glare, P. G. W., ed. (2012), Oxford Latin Dictionary, 2nd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
3. ^ a b c d e f 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. ^ 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 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