divergo

Forms

dīvergō (present infinitive dīvergere); third conjugation, no perfect or supine stems, third person-only in the passive^[1]

Etymology

It is from Latin dis- + vergō (“to slope down, incline”).^[2][3][1] vergō goes back to Proto-Italic *werg-e/o- and Proto-Indo-European *h₂uerg- (“to turn”).^[4]

Earliest recorded meaning

The OLD's only example is in the undated land-surveying writer Hyginus, of water that runs off from a highest point towards the lower ground.^[2]

Semantic evolution

It is rare in antiquity: besides the surveyors, the TLL has the spelling div- in the manuscripts of Sedulius and the Tironian notes where it reads dēvergō “incline, sink”, and VoLat treats the two as one verb.^[3][5]

Medieval Latin used it of a boundary turning away, as in a charter from Hungary in which the line turns south,^[6] and in the Czech lands for scattering in different directions.^[7] In New Latin it meant “to diverge”,^[1] and English took diverge from the Modern Latin verb in the 1660s.^[8]

Timeline

• 1st half of the 5th century AD – Manuscripts of Sedulius give the spelling divergo.^[3][9]
• 1312/1372 – A Hungarian charter uses it of a boundary turning south.^[6]
• 1660s – English borrows the Modern Latin verb as diverge.^[8]

Meanings

Verb

1. To proceed in different directions, to diverge.^[2][1]
2. To incline, sink.^[5]
3. (Medieval Latin) To turn away, bend aside.^[6]
4. (Medieval Latin) To scatter, fly apart.^[7]

Related words

• English diverge

References

1. ^ a b c d Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c 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. ^ 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 VoLat: Vocabolario della Lingua Latina (2018), Milan: Hoepli
6. ^ a b c Bartal, Antal, et al. (1987–), Lexicon Latinitatis Medii Aevi Hungariae, Budapest: Akadémiai Kiadó; online ed. ELTE
7. ^ a b Latinitatis medii aevi lexicon Bohemorum / Slovník středověké latiny v českých zemích (1977–), Prague: Academia; electronic version, Institute of Philosophy of the Czech Academy of Sciences
8. ^ a b Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
9. ^ Köbler, Gerhard (2010), Lateinisches Abkunfts- und Wirkungswörterbuch für Altertum und Mittelalter, online ed., koeblergerhard.de