emolumentum

Forms

ēmolumentum n (genitive ēmolumentī); second declension^[1] It is also spelled ēmolimentum.^[2]

Etymology

The OLD derives it from ēmolō (“to grind out”) with the suffix -mentum, originally probably “the output of a mill”;^[3] the TLL, following Walde, explains it as what the miller gets by grinding, and Döderlein too derives it from molō (“to grind”).^[4][5] Lewis & Short instead derive it from ēmōlior (“to work out”), so that it would first mean a working out or effort.^[2] De Vaan traces molō to Proto-Indo-European *melh₂- (“to crush, grind”) and compares Ancient Greek μύλη (múlē, “handmill”) and Lithuanian málti (“to grind”).^[6]

Earliest recorded meaning

The TLL finds it once each in the poets Plautus and Lucretius, and in prose from Varro and the Rhetorica ad Herennium on.^[4]

Semantic evolution

Its usual sense is advantage, benefit or gain: Cicero renders the Stoic terms Ancient Greek ὠφέλημα (ōphélēma) and Ancient Greek βλάμμα (blámma) as emolumenta and detrimenta, and says that good men are not driven to wrongdoing by any profit.^[2][4] Especially in legal texts it is financial advantage, as in Suetonius and the jurists of the Digest.^[3] Varro once seems to use it of effort, a sense Lewis & Short connect with their etymology, and the Theodosian Code once of a building.^[2] In Church Latin it is advantage or profit, and in Medieval Latin also an effect, progress or achievement.^[7][8]

Timeline

• c. 250–184 BC – Plautus uses it once.^[4][9]
• 81–43 BC – Cicero of advantages opposed to harms.^[2][9]
• c. 75–c. 150 AD – Suetonius of financial gain.^[3][9]
• mid-15th century – English emolument is borrowed from it, partly through French.^[10]

Meanings

Noun

1. An advantage, benefit, gain, profit.^[3][2][7][1]
2. (law) Financial advantage, emolument.^[3]
3. Effort, exertion.^[2][1]
4. (Medieval Latin) An effect; progress, achievement.^[8]

Word family

• emolumenticius

Related words

• molō
• English emolument

Usage notes

Döderlein distinguishes it from lucrum: lucrum is gain earned by one's own effort, the opposite of damnum, while ēmolumentum is gain that falls to one without exertion, the opposite of detrimentum.^[5]

References

1. ^ a b c Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f g Lewis, Charlton T.; Short, Charles (1879), A Latin Dictionary, Oxford: Clarendon Press
3. ^ a b c d e Glare, P. G. W., ed. (2012), Oxford Latin Dictionary, 2nd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
4. ^ a b c d Thesaurus linguae Latinae (1900–), Leipzig: Teubner; Berlin: De Gruyter; open-access ed., Munich: Bayerische Akademie der Wissenschaften
5. ^ a b Döderlein, Ludwig (1874), Döderlein’s Hand-book of Latin Synonymes, tr. H. H. Arnold, Andover: W. F. Draper
6. ^ de Vaan, Michiel (2008), Etymological Dictionary of Latin and the other Italic Languages, Leiden Indo-European Etymological Dictionary Series 7, Leiden; Boston: Brill
7. ^ a b Stelten, Leo F. (1995), Dictionary of Ecclesiastical Latin, Peabody, Mass.: Hendrickson
8. ^ a b Niermeyer, J. F. (1976), Mediae Latinitatis Lexicon Minus, Leiden: Brill
9. ^ a b c Köbler, Gerhard (2010), Lateinisches Abkunfts- und Wirkungswörterbuch für Altertum und Mittelalter, online ed., koeblergerhard.de
10. ^ Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com