Etymologically
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dispenso

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Pronunciation

  • Classical: [dɪsˈpẽː.soː][1]
  • Ecclesiastical: [disˈpɛn.so][1]

Forms

dispēnsō (present infinitive dispēnsāre, perfect active dispēnsāvī, supine dispēnsātum); first conjugation[1]

Etymology

It is from Latin dis- + pēnsō (“to weigh out, pay”).[2][1][3] pēnsō is a frequentative of pendō (“to hang; to weigh out, pay”), which de Vaan traces to Proto-Italic *pend-e/o- and Proto-Indo-European *(s)pend- (“to spin”); the sense went from hanging to weighing out and paying.[1][4]

Earliest recorded meaning

In the OLD's earliest quotation, from Plautus, a character has used two hundred coins to be paid out.[2][5] Lewis & Short take it of distributing pay among soldiers.[6]

Semantic evolution

Its first sense, of money, is to pay out or distribute by weight, and so to apportion.[6][2] It is then to manage or administer, especially a household: Cicero speaks of the man who managed his domestic affairs.[2] More widely it is to order, arrange, regulate: Livy writes of arranging the year by inserting intercalary months.[2] Caper reported that the oldest writers used a deponent ⟨dispēnsor⟩.[3] Church Latin glosses it to distribute, dispense, regulate.[7]

Timeline

  • c. 250–184 BC – Plautus of paying out money.[2][6][5]
  • 81–43 BC – Cicero of managing a household.[2][6][5]
  • 59 BC–17 AD – Livy of regulating the calendar.[2][5]

Meanings

Verb

  1. To pay out, distribute, apportion; to dispense.[2][6][1][7]
  2. To manage, administer, control.[2][6][1]
  3. To order, arrange, regulate; to husband.[2][1][7]

Word family

References

  1. ^ a b c d e f g h Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
  2. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k 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. ^ 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 Köbler, Gerhard (2010), Lateinisches Abkunfts- und Wirkungswörterbuch für Altertum und Mittelalter, online ed., koeblergerhard.de
  6. ^ a b c d e f Lewis, Charlton T.; Short, Charles (1879), A Latin Dictionary, Oxford: Clarendon Press
  7. ^ a b c Stelten, Leo F. (1995), Dictionary of Ecclesiastical Latin, Peabody, Mass.: Hendrickson