excepto

Forms

exceptō (present infinitive exceptāre, perfect active exceptāvī, supine exceptātum); first conjugation^[1]

Etymology

It is from Latin excipiō (“to take out, receive”) + -tō, a frequentative formed on the participle ⟨exceptus⟩.^[2][3][4] excipiō is a compound of ex- and capiō (“to take, seize”).^[5][6]

Earliest recorded meaning

Its first known use is in Cicero's Paradoxa Stoicorum, of a man who takes bearded mullets out of his fishpond.^[2][3][7]

Semantic evolution

It is a rare word.^[3] Caesar uses it of pulling men up one by one,^[8][9][7] and Virgil of mares that catch the light breezes, which Servius explains as “receive often”.^[2][10] Seneca uses it of catching something with open mouth, Silius Italicus of receiving deaths in the breast and Tacitus of receiving wounds.^[8][7] The TLL notes that manuscripts often confuse it with exspectō.^[10]

Timeline

• 81–43 BC – Cicero uses it of taking fish out of a pond.^[2][5]
• c. 50 BC – Caesar uses it of pulling men up onto a wall.^[8][5]
• 70–19 BC – Virgil uses it of mares catching the breezes.^[2][5]
• 98–115 AD – Tacitus uses it of receiving wounds.^[7][5]

Meanings

Verb

1. To take out or up, pick out; to pull up.^[2][8][9]
2. To take in, receive; to catch (breezes, wounds and the like), inhale.^[2][8][1]

Word family

• exceptaculum

Usage notes

Medieval Latin has an adverb and preposition exceptō “except, with the exception of; besides, moreover”, used in charters and glossed into Old High German.^[11][5]

References

1. ^ a b c d Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f g Glare, P. G. W., ed. (2012), Oxford Latin Dictionary, 2nd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
3. ^ a b c Lewis, Charlton T.; Short, Charles (1879), A Latin Dictionary, Oxford: Clarendon Press
4. ^ Bianchi, Rossella; Lelli, Olga (2014), VOLI: Vocabolario di latino, Florence: Le Monnier
5. ^ a b c d e f Köbler, Gerhard (2010), Lateinisches Abkunfts- und Wirkungswörterbuch für Altertum und Mittelalter, online ed., koeblergerhard.de
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 c d Conte, Gian Biagio; Pianezzola, Emilio; Ranucci, Giuliano (2010), il Latino: Vocabolario della lingua latina, 3rd ed., Florence: Le Monnier
8. ^ a b c d e Georges, Karl Ernst (1913–1918), Ausführliches lateinisch-deutsches Handwörterbuch, 8th ed., ed. Heinrich Georges, Hannover; Leipzig: Hahn
9. ^ a b Gaffiot, Félix (2016), Dictionnaire latin-français, new ed. by Gérard Gréco et al. (Gaffiot 2016), online ed.
10. ^ a b Thesaurus linguae Latinae (1900–), Leipzig: Teubner; Berlin: De Gruyter; open-access ed., Munich: Bayerische Akademie der Wissenschaften
11. ^ Niermeyer, J. F. (1976), Mediae Latinitatis Lexicon Minus, Leiden: Brill