dispereo

Forms

dispereō (present infinitive disperīre, perfect active disperiī or disperīvī); irregular conjugation, no passive, no supine stem^[1]

Etymology

It is from Latin dis- + pereō (“to perish”), with ⟨dis-⟩ in the sense “utterly”.^[2][1][3]

Earliest recorded meaning

The TLL counts it 18 times in Plautus,^[3] as in the Poenulus, where someone vows a man will perish before he can kick once.^[4]

Semantic evolution

It is to perish, be destroyed, often in hyperbole: dispeream sī or nisi, may I die if, or if not.^[2] It is also to be ruined or to go for nothing: Varro writes of crops that perish, Lucretius of food lost, and Cicero asks whether his hearers will let a single estate be lost.^[2][4] Lewis & Short call it rare and mostly early Latin, and the TLL finds it frequent later only in the Itala and the Vulgate, which also have a future disperiet.^[4][3] Church Latin glosses it perish, be entirely ruined.^[5]

Timeline

• c. 250–184 BC – Plautus.^[3][4]
• 116–27 BC – Varro of crops perishing.^[4]
• 81–43 BC – Cicero of an estate lost.^[2][4]
• 390–406 AD – The Vulgate.^[3]

Meanings

Verb

1. To perish, be destroyed;^[2][4][1][5] dispeream sī: may I die if.^[2][4][1][5]
2. To be ruined; to go for nothing, be wasted.^[2][4]

Related words

• pereō

References

1. ^ a b c d e f 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 c d e 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 h i Lewis, Charlton T.; Short, Charles (1879), A Latin Dictionary, Oxford: Clarendon Press
5. ^ a b c Stelten, Leo F. (1995), Dictionary of Ecclesiastical Latin, Peabody, Mass.: Hendrickson