dicis

Forms

dicis (genitive of an unused noun; indeclinable)^[2][3]

Etymology

Its origin is disputed.^[2][4] Most dictionaries take it as the genitive of an unused noun *dix, from Latin dīcō² (“to say”).^[5][3][6][7] Wiktionary gives the noun as *dex (“appearance, form”), the root of index.^[1] Walde rejects a borrowing from Greek.^[4] De Vaan reconstructs a Proto-Italic root noun *-dik-s (“saying”), the second part of compounds such as iūdex.^[8]

The OLD instead suggests, with “perhaps”, an adaptation of the genitive of Greek δίκης (díkēs, “of a lawsuit”), as in the phrase “for the sake of the lawsuit”,^[2] and Pokorny likewise derives it from the Greek noun.^[9]

Earliest recorded meaning

It is first found in Cicero, in the phrase dicis causā “for form's sake”:^[2][7] in the Verrines a man is ordered to give a few coins dicis causā, to keep up appearances.^[5][10]

Semantic evolution

Lewis & Short take it to have been at first a legal term, “for the sake of judicial form”, and then to have been used generally for “for form's sake, for the sake of appearance”.^[5] It never left these phrases: dicis causā in Cicero, Varro, Nepos and Pliny the Elder, dicis grātiā in the jurists of the Digest and the Institutes,^[5][3] and dicis ergō, which the grammarian Charisius gives as the equivalent of dicis causā.^[3][6]

Timeline

• 81–43 BC – Cicero uses dicis causā in the Verrines and in a letter to Atticus.^[5][3][7]
• 116–27 BC – Varro uses the phrase twice in his work on the Latin language.^[3][10][7]
• c. 100–24 BC – Nepos says that provinces were given to some men only dicis causā.^[11][3][7]
• 23/24–79 AD – Pliny the Elder speaks of a pontiff dining dicis causā.^[5][7]
• c. 362 AD – Charisius records dicis ergō beside dicis causā.^[3][6][7]

Meanings

Noun

1. (only in the genitive, in the phrases dicis causā, dicis grātiā and dicis ergō) For form's sake, for the sake of appearances, nominally.^[2][5][3]
2. (law) For the sake of legal formality.^[5]

Usage notes

The phrase is the Latin counterpart of Greek λόγου χάριν (lógou khárin), which Lewis & Short give as its equivalent.^[5]

References

1. ^ a b c 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 Georges, Karl Ernst (1913–1918), Ausführliches lateinisch-deutsches Handwörterbuch, 8th ed., ed. Heinrich Georges, Hannover; Leipzig: Hahn
4. ^ a b Walde, Alois (1906), Lateinisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, Heidelberg: Carl Winter
5. ^ a b c d e f g h i Lewis, Charlton T.; Short, Charles (1879), A Latin Dictionary, Oxford: Clarendon Press
6. ^ a b c Gaffiot, Félix (2016), Dictionnaire latin-français, new ed. by Gérard Gréco et al. (Gaffiot 2016), online ed.
7. ^ a b c d e f g Köbler, Gerhard (2010), Lateinisches Abkunfts- und Wirkungswörterbuch für Altertum und Mittelalter, online ed., koeblergerhard.de
8. ^ de Vaan, Michiel (2008), Etymological Dictionary of Latin and the other Italic Languages, Leiden Indo-European Etymological Dictionary Series 7, Leiden; Boston: Brill
9. ^ Pokorny, Julius (1959), Indogermanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, Bern; Munich: Francke
10. ^ a b Conte, Gian Biagio; Pianezzola, Emilio; Ranucci, Giuliano (2010), il Latino: Vocabolario della lingua latina, 3rd ed., Florence: Le Monnier
11. ^ Lewis, Charlton T. (1890), An Elementary Latin Dictionary, New York: American Book Company