efflo

Forms

efflō (present infinitive efflāre, perfect active efflāvī, supine efflātum); first conjugation^[1] The older spelling is ecflō.^[2][3]

Etymology

It is from Latin ex- + flō (“to blow, breathe”).^[2][1][3] De Vaan tentatively traces flō to Proto-Indo-European *bʰleh₁- (“to blow”), and thinks it may be related to fleō (“to weep”).^[4]

Earliest recorded meaning

The TLL reads it first in Plautus, in the Persa, with the old spelling ecflāre.^[3]

Semantic evolution

It means to breathe or blow out: Lucretius has the sun blowing out its fires,^[5] Virgil the Chimaera breathing out Etna's fires from its throat and the horses of the Sun breathing out light,^[2][5] and Ovid fire from mouth and nostrils.^[5] Animam efflāre is to breathe one's last: Gaius Gracchus tells of a herdsman beaten until he died.^[2] Varro uses it of the wind blowing away small creatures, and Catullus of horns sounding a blast.^[2] Of things it is to give off vapours or moisture, as in Seneca's earth,^[2] and Lucretius uses it of particles losing all their colour.^[2] Ennius has it intransitive, of jets of blood spurting out.^[2] Petronius uses it of someone babbling out all he had to say.^[2] Lewis & Short call it mostly poetic and post-Augustan.^[5] Stelten gives "give forth, breathe out" for Church Latin.^[6]

Timeline

• c. 250–184 BC – Plautus, its first use.^[3]
• 204–169 BC – Ennius of blood spurting out.^[2]
• 96–55 BC – Lucretius of the sun blowing out its fires.^[5]
• 70–19 BC – Virgil of the Chimaera breathing fire.^[2]
• before 66 AD – Petronius of babbling.^[2]

Meanings

Verb

1. To breathe or blow out, exhale (fire, water, sounds); animam efflāre, to breathe one's last, expire.^[2][5][1]
2. To blow away;^[2] (of a horn) to sound (a blast).^[2]
3. To give off, emit (vapours, moisture); (intransitive) to issue forth.^[2][6]
4. To babble out, blether.^[2]

Word family

• efflātus
• perefflo

Related words

• flō
• afflō
• īnflō
• exhālō

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 o p q Glare, P. G. W., ed. (2012), Oxford Latin Dictionary, 2nd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
3. ^ a b c d 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 e f 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