Etymologically
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dissocio

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Pronunciation

  • Classical: [dɪsˈsɔ.ki.oː][1]
  • Ecclesiastical: [disˈsɔː.t͡ʃi.o][1]

Forms

dissociō (present infinitive dissociāre, perfect active dissociāvī, supine dissociātum); first conjugation[1]

Etymology

It is from Latin dis- + sociō (“to join, unite”),[2][3] from socius (“companion”), which de Vaan traces to Proto-Italic *sokjo- and Proto-Indo-European *sokʷ-(h₂)-i-o- (“companion”).[4] Cognate with Sanskrit सखा (sákhā, “friend, companion”) and Old English secg (“man, warrior”).[4]

Earliest recorded meaning

The TLL finds it once each in Lucilius, Varro, Lucretius, Nepos, Horace, Ovid and other writers.[3] Lucretius has it of parting the closely packed parts of a thing.[2]

Semantic evolution

In the physical sense it is mostly poetic:[5] Horace has mountains that would be continuous if a shady valley did not part them, Ovid things set apart in place that the creator bound in peace, and Statius a coast cut off by the sea.[2][5] Terentianus Maurus says punctuation separates words.[2] In the moral sense, frequent in Cicero, it is to set at variance or dissolve ties: unlike tastes break up friendships, and speech bound together men who had lived apart.[5][6] Nepos has citizens divided in feeling, Seneca greed and luxury dividing mortals, and Frontinus the Roman people split by civil war.[2] With ab it is to separate one thing from another, as Cicero's philosophers parted from the orators and Tacitus' recruits set apart from veterans and legion from legion.[2][5] Tacitus also has people dissociating their cause from others'.[2][6]

Timeline

  • c. 180–102 BC – Lucilius has the word.[3][7]
  • 96–55 BC – Lucretius, of parting the parts of a body.[2][7]
  • 81–43 BC – Cicero, of breaking up friendships.[2][5][7]
  • 65–8 BC – Horace, of mountains parted by a valley.[2][7]
  • 98–115 AD – Tacitus, of splitting legion from legion.[2][7]

Meanings

Verb

  1. To separate in space, part; to break apart.[2][5][1]
  2. To disunite, set at variance; to dissolve (ties of friendship).[2][5][1]
  3. To dissociate from, separate from.[2][6]

Word family

  • dissociābilis
  • dissocialis
  • dissociātiō

References

  1. ^ a b c d e Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
  2. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n Glare, P. G. W., ed. (2012), Oxford Latin Dictionary, 2nd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
  3. ^ a b c Thesaurus linguae Latinae (1900–), Leipzig: Teubner; Berlin: De Gruyter; open-access ed., Munich: Bayerische Akademie der Wissenschaften
  4. ^ a b 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 e f g Lewis, Charlton T.; Short, Charles (1879), A Latin Dictionary, Oxford: Clarendon Press
  6. ^ a b c Georges, Karl Ernst (1913–1918), Ausführliches lateinisch-deutsches Handwörterbuch, 8th ed., ed. Heinrich Georges, Hannover; Leipzig: Hahn
  7. ^ a b c d e Köbler, Gerhard (2010), Lateinisches Abkunfts- und Wirkungswörterbuch für Altertum und Mittelalter, online ed., koeblergerhard.de