diabolus

Forms

diabolus m (genitive diabolī); second declension^[1] Also diabulus (Old Latin Bible, Jerome, Augustine) and zabulus, zabolus (Lactantius, Commodian, Augustine); medieval dyabolus, diablus.^[2][3][4][5]

Etymology

It is borrowed from Ancient Greek διάβολος (diábolos, “slanderer, accuser”),^[1][3][6] a noun from διαβάλλω (diabállō, “to slander”), a compound of διά (diá, “through, across”) and βάλλω (bállō, “to throw”).^[1]

Isidore of Seville explains the name twice: in Hebrew it means “flowing down”, because the Devil fell from heaven, and in Greek “accuser”, because he accuses the innocent before God.^[7][5] The Romance words for “devil” continue it, among them Italian diavolo.^[8]

Earliest recorded meaning

It is a word of Christian Latin.^[8][3] The first author to use it is Tertullian, for a devil and for the Devil.^[9][6][4]

Semantic evolution

In Bible translations and the Church Fathers it is the Devil, Satan, and also any demon or evil spirit.^[9][10][5] Medieval writers kept these senses and applied the word to wicked people and, by metonymy, to disaster and ruin.^[5] It entered plant and mineral names: morsus diabolī, “devil's bite”, for the devil's-bit scabious, and in alchemy dentēs diabolī for sal ammoniac.^[5] In British sources the Devil appears as tempter, in possession and in curses, from Gildas and Bede on.^[11]

Timeline

• c. 160–220 AD – Tertullian uses it of a devil and of the Devil.^[9][6][4]
• c. 250–317 AD – Lactantius writes the form zabulus.^[3][2][4]
• c. 560–636 AD – Isidore of Seville explains the name from Hebrew and Greek.^[12][4]
• First third of the 8th century – Bede writes of the tyranny of the Devil being driven out.^[11][4]

Meanings

Noun

1. (Ecclesiastical Latin) The devil, Satan.^[9][10][13]
2. (Ecclesiastical Latin) A devil, demon, evil spirit.^[9][5]
3. (Medieval Latin) A wicked person.^[5]
4. (Medieval Latin) calamity, ruin.^[5]
5. (Medieval Latin, botany) morsus diabolī, the devil's-bit scabious.^[5]

Word family

• diabolicus
• diabolōsus

Related words

• daemōn
• English devil
• English diabolical

Usage notes

Diabolus is also a Greek man's name in Plautus' Asinaria, where a young man of that name has a contract drawn up.^[2]

References

1. ^ a b c d e Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c Thesaurus linguae Latinae (1900–), Leipzig: Teubner; Berlin: De Gruyter; open-access ed., Munich: Bayerische Akademie der Wissenschaften
3. ^ a b c d Georges, Karl Ernst (1913–1918), Ausführliches lateinisch-deutsches Handwörterbuch, 8th ed., ed. Heinrich Georges, Hannover; Leipzig: Hahn
4. ^ a b c d e f Köbler, Gerhard (2010), Lateinisches Abkunfts- und Wirkungswörterbuch für Altertum und Mittelalter, online ed., koeblergerhard.de
5. ^ a b c d e f g h i Mittellateinisches Wörterbuch bis zum ausgehenden 13. Jahrhundert (1967–), Munich: C. H. Beck; Bayerische Akademie der Wissenschaften
6. ^ a b c Gaffiot, Félix (2016), Dictionnaire latin-français, new ed. by Gérard Gréco et al. (Gaffiot 2016), online ed.
7. ^ Isidore of Seville, Etymologiarum sive Originum libri XX, ed. W. M. Lindsay (Oxford, 1911)., p. 8.11.18
8. ^ a b Conte, Gian Biagio; Pianezzola, Emilio; Ranucci, Giuliano (2010), il Latino: Vocabolario della lingua latina, 3rd ed., Florence: Le Monnier
9. ^ a b c d e Lewis, Charlton T.; Short, Charles (1879), A Latin Dictionary, Oxford: Clarendon Press
10. ^ a b Stelten, Leo F. (1995), Dictionary of Ecclesiastical Latin, Peabody, Mass.: Hendrickson
11. ^ a b Latham, R. E., D. R. Howlett, R. K. Ashdowne, et al. (1975–2013), Dictionary of Medieval Latin from British Sources, London: British Academy / Oxford University Press
12. ^ Isidore of Seville, Etymologiarum sive Originum libri XX, ed. W. M. Lindsay (Oxford, 1911).
13. ^ Niermeyer, J. F. (1976), Mediae Latinitatis Lexicon Minus, Leiden: Brill