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dormito

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Forms

dormītō (present infinitive dormītāre, perfect active dormītāvī, supine dormītātum); first conjugation[1]

Etymology

It is from Latin dormiō (“to sleep”) + -itō.[2][3][4] De Vaan traces dormiō to Proto-Italic *dormje/o- and Proto-Indo-European *drm-i̯e- (“to sleep”).[3] Cognate with Ancient Greek δαρθάνω (darthánō, “to fall asleep”).[3] The grammarian Consentius notes that it looks like a frequentative but is used rather of beginning to sleep.[4]

Earliest recorded meaning

De Vaan dates it from Plautus,[3] in whom someone is told that he has been dozing in idleness till this time of day and should shake off his sloth.[2]

Semantic evolution

It means to feel sleepy, to drowse or nod off;[2][5] Cicero has it in his letters and in the De divinatione.[5] From the first it is also used of letting one's energy or attention flag:[2] Horace's quandoque bonus dormitat Homērus, “sometimes even good Homer nods”, is quoted by Seneca and Quintilian.[2] Ovid applies it to a lamp about to go out, dormītante lucernā.[5] In Church Latin it is to sleep or to be lazy.[6]

Timeline

  • c. 250–184 BC – Plautus, of dozing in idleness.[2][3][7]
  • 81–43 BC – Cicero, of drowsiness.[5][7]
  • 65–8 BC – Horace, “good Homer nods”.[2][7]
  • 43 BC–18 AD – Ovid, of a lamp going out.[5][7]

Meanings

Verb

  1. To feel sleepy, to drowse, to begin to sleep.[2][5][1]
  2. To let one's energy or attention flag; to be sluggish, do nothing.[2][1][6]
  3. (poetic) Of a lamp, to be going out.[5]

Word family

  • dormītātiō
  • dormītātor
  • obdormītō

Usage notes

Quandoque bonus dormitat Homērus (Horace, Ars poetica 359) became proverbial for a lapse by a great writer.[2]

References

  1. ^ a b c Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
  2. ^ a b c d e f g h i j Glare, P. G. W., ed. (2012), Oxford Latin Dictionary, 2nd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
  3. ^ a b c d e de Vaan, Michiel (2008), Etymological Dictionary of Latin and the other Italic Languages, Leiden Indo-European Etymological Dictionary Series 7, Leiden; Boston: Brill
  4. ^ a b Thesaurus linguae Latinae (1900–), Leipzig: Teubner; Berlin: De Gruyter; open-access ed., Munich: Bayerische Akademie der Wissenschaften
  5. ^ a b c d e f g Lewis, Charlton T.; Short, Charles (1879), A Latin Dictionary, Oxford: Clarendon Press
  6. ^ a b Stelten, Leo F. (1995), Dictionary of Ecclesiastical Latin, Peabody, Mass.: Hendrickson
  7. ^ a b c d Köbler, Gerhard (2010), Lateinisches Abkunfts- und Wirkungswörterbuch für Altertum und Mittelalter, online ed., koeblergerhard.de