excors

Forms

excors (genitive excordis); third-declension one-termination adjective^[1]

Etymology

It is from Latin ex- + cor (“heart”), “without heart”, the heart being taken as the seat of intelligence.^[2][3][1][4] cor goes back to Proto-Italic *kord and Proto-Indo-European *ḱērd (“heart”).^[5]

Earliest recorded meaning

Köbler records it from Plautus,^[6] who has excors, caecus, incogitabilis, “senseless, blind, thoughtless”.^[3] It means lacking intelligence.^[2]

Semantic evolution

It means lacking intelligence, senseless, stupid.^[2][3] Cicero asks what old woman could be found so senseless as to fear such things, and says that only the very foolish fail to see open flattery;^[3] Horace uses it beside turpis, “base”.^[3] In Ecclesiastical Latin it means foolish or unlearned,^[7] and in Medieval Latin from Britain it is glossed sine corde, “without heart”, and with an Old English gloss.^[8]

Timeline

• c. 250–184 BC – Plautus has excors, caecus, incogitabilis.^[3][6]
• 81–43 BC – Cicero uses it and explains it from cor.^[3][4][6]
• 65–8 BC – Horace uses it in the Epistles and Satires.^[3][6]

Meanings

Adjective

1. Lacking intelligence, senseless, silly, stupid.^[2][3][1][7]

Related words

• cor
• vēcors
• sōcors
• concors
• discors

Usage notes

Cicero explained the word from cor: to some the heart itself seems to be the mind, ex quo excordes, vecordes concordesque dicuntur, “whence men are called excordes, vecordes and concordes”.^[3][4] Lewis and Short compare āmēns, dēmēns, vēcors, īnsānus, vēsānus and dēlīrus.^[3]

References

1. ^ a b c d e Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d 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 Lewis, Charlton T.; Short, Charles (1879), A Latin Dictionary, Oxford: Clarendon Press
4. ^ a b c Thesaurus linguae Latinae (1900–), Leipzig: Teubner; Berlin: De Gruyter; open-access ed., Munich: Bayerische Akademie der Wissenschaften
5. ^ 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
7. ^ a b Stelten, Leo F. (1995), Dictionary of Ecclesiastical Latin, Peabody, Mass.: Hendrickson
8. ^ Latham, R. E., D. R. Howlett, R. K. Ashdowne, et al. (1975–2013), Dictionary of Medieval Latin from British Sources, London: British Academy / Oxford University Press