Etymologically
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erepo

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Pronunciation

  • Classical: [eːˈreː.poː][1]
  • Ecclesiastical: [eˈrɛː.po][1]

Forms

ērēpō (present infinitive ērēpere, perfect active ērēpsī, supine ērēptum); third conjugation, no passive[1] Horace has the syncopated pluperfect subjunctive ērēpsēmus.[2][3]

Etymology

It is from Latin ex- (“out”) + rēpō (“to creep”).[2][4][1] De Vaan traces that verb to Proto-Italic *rēp-e/o- and Proto-Indo-European *h₁reh₁p- (“to creep”) or *h₁rēp-.[5] Cognate with Lithuanian rėplióti (“to creep”).[5]

Earliest recorded meaning

It is first found in Plautus,[5][2] where a character is ordered out: i foras, lumbrice, qui sub terra erepsisti modo, “out with you, you earthworm, who have just crawled out from under the ground”.[2]

Semantic evolution

Lewis & Short call it pre-classical and then Augustan and later.[3] It means to creep or crawl out, as in Varro, Silius Italicus and Statius,[3] and of a slow or stealthy emergence: Seneca writes erepsi modo e ruinis domus, “I have just crept out of the ruins of my house”, and uses it figuratively of money slowly creeping out of poverty.[2][3] Upwards, it is to crawl or clamber up, as Lucan's Gyareus, trying to climb onto an allied ship, and in Suetonius.[2][3] Transitively, Horace has it of creeping up mountains and Juvenal of crawling across a whole field on one's knees.[3] Statius applies it to a building that rises.[3]

Timeline

  • c. 250–184 BC – Plautus, “crawl out”.[2][5][6]
  • 65–8 BC – Horace, of climbing mountains.[3][6]
  • 4 BC–65 AD – Seneca, of creeping out of ruins.[2][6]
  • 39–65 AD – Lucan, “clamber up”.[2][6]

Meanings

Verb

  1. To creep or crawl out; to emerge slowly or stealthily;[2][3][1] (transitive) to crawl across.[2][3][1]
  2. To crawl or clamber up;[2][3][1] (transitive) to climb.[2][3][1]

References

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