elaboratio

Forms

ēlabōrātiō f (genitive ēlabōrātiōnis); third declension^[1]

Etymology

It is formed from Latin ēlabōrō (“to work out with effort”) + -tiō, the action noun of the verb.^[1][2] The verb is itself made from labor (“toil”), whose origin de Vaan leaves open: the usual link with labō (“to totter”) seems unconvincing to him.^[3]

Earliest recorded meaning

Its first known use is in the Rhetorica ad Herennium, which says that certain figures of speech cannot be found without careful effort and the spending of labour.^[4][5][6]

Semantic evolution

The word stayed rare in Classical Latin, meaning painstaking effort or careful diligence.^[1][7] Late authors used it of toil in general: Firmicus Maternus of an effort through which the divine foretells things,^[5] Jerome in rendering a Greek version of a Hebrew phrase as “bread of toils”,^[4] and Augustine.^[4] Ecclesiastical dictionaries give it as elaboration or persevering effort.^[8]

English took it over in the 1570s, first in a sense from physiology; the sense “working out in exact detail” followed in the 1610s.^[9] Italian has elaborazione.^[10]

Timeline

• 86/82 BC – The Rhetorica ad Herennium uses it of the effort needed to find figures of speech.^[4][5][6]
• 343/350 AD – Firmicus Maternus uses it in his astrological work.^[5][6]
• c. 383–419/420 AD – Jerome uses it in a letter on a Hebrew phrase.^[4][6]
• 1570s – English borrows it as elaboration.^[9]

Meanings

Noun

1. Painstaking effort, careful diligence.^[1][7][11]
2. (Late Latin) Toil, laborious work.^[4][8]

Related words

• labor²
• English elaboration

References

1. ^ a b c d Glare, P. G. W., ed. (2012), Oxford Latin Dictionary, 2nd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
2. ^ Bianchi, Rossella; Lelli, Olga (2014), VOLI: Vocabolario di latino, Florence: Le Monnier
3. ^ 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 c d e f Thesaurus linguae Latinae (1900–), Leipzig: Teubner; Berlin: De Gruyter; open-access ed., Munich: Bayerische Akademie der Wissenschaften
5. ^ a b c d Georges, Karl Ernst (1913–1918), Ausführliches lateinisch-deutsches Handwörterbuch, 8th ed., ed. Heinrich Georges, Hannover; Leipzig: Hahn
6. ^ a b c d Köbler, Gerhard (2010), Lateinisches Abkunfts- und Wirkungswörterbuch für Altertum und Mittelalter, online ed., koeblergerhard.de
7. ^ a b Lewis, Charlton T.; Short, Charles (1879), A Latin Dictionary, Oxford: Clarendon Press
8. ^ a b Stelten, Leo F. (1995), Dictionary of Ecclesiastical Latin, Peabody, Mass.: Hendrickson
9. ^ a b Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
10. ^ Conte, Gian Biagio; Pianezzola, Emilio; Ranucci, Giuliano (2010), il Latino: Vocabolario della lingua latina, 3rd ed., Florence: Le Monnier
11. ^ Gaffiot, Félix (2016), Dictionnaire latin-français, new ed. by Gérard Gréco et al. (Gaffiot 2016), online ed.