discolor

Forms

discolor (genitive discolōris); third-declension one-termination adjective^[1]

Etymology

It is from Latin dis- + color (“colour”),^[2][3][4] the opposite of concolor “of the same colour”.^[5] De Vaan traces color to Proto-Italic *kelōs- (“outside, aspect”) and Proto-Indo-European *ḱel-ōs (“cover, covering”), with a shift of meaning from “covering” to “colour”.^[6]

Earliest recorded meaning

Köbler and Lewis and Short record it first in Cicero, who uses it once, in the Verrines, of things of different colours.^[4][5]

Semantic evolution

It means “of a different colour”, often with a dative of the thing compared,^[5][2] as in Virgil's gleam of gold showing through the branches of the golden bough,^[2][5] and with a plural subject “of different colours”: Varro has wax tablets of different colours,^[5][7] Ovid the black and white men of a board game.^[5][7] From this it came to mean variegated or particoloured, of birds in Pliny the Elder and of clothing in Curtius.^[5][2] Horace and Persius transfer it to things unlike in nature: the matron will be unlike the courtesan.^[5][7][8] The TLL notes that it is often confused with dēcolor.^[3] Late writers such as Prudentius made a feminine discolora.^[5]

In Ecclesiastical Latin it means speckled or many-coloured.^[9] British medieval writers used it for differently coloured or changing faces, for the spotted coat of a leopard, and once for “colourless”.^[10]

Timeline

• 81–43 BC – Cicero uses it once, in the Verrines.^[5][4]
• 116–27 BC – Varro uses it of wax tablets of different colours.^[5][7][4]
• 70–19 BC – Virgil uses it of the gold gleaming through the bough.^[2][5][4]
• 65–8 BC – Horace uses it for “unlike” in character.^[5][7][4]
• 348/49–c. 413 AD – Prudentius uses the feminine discolora.^[5][4]

Meanings

Adjective

1. Differing in colour (from something); with a plural, of different colours.^[2][5]
2. Variegated, particoloured.^[2][5]
3. (transferred) Different, unlike.^[5][7]
4. (Medieval Latin) Colourless.^[10]

References

1. ^ a b c Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f g 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 c d e f g 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 j k l m n o p q Lewis, Charlton T.; Short, Charles (1879), A Latin Dictionary, Oxford: Clarendon Press
6. ^ de Vaan, Michiel (2008), Etymological Dictionary of Latin and the other Italic Languages, Leiden Indo-European Etymological Dictionary Series 7, Leiden; Boston: Brill
7. ^ a b c d e f Georges, Karl Ernst (1913–1918), Ausführliches lateinisch-deutsches Handwörterbuch, 8th ed., ed. Heinrich Georges, Hannover; Leipzig: Hahn
8. ^ Conte, Gian Biagio; Pianezzola, Emilio; Ranucci, Giuliano (2010), il Latino: Vocabolario della lingua latina, 3rd ed., Florence: Le Monnier
9. ^ Stelten, Leo F. (1995), Dictionary of Ecclesiastical Latin, Peabody, Mass.: Hendrickson
10. ^ 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