Etymologically
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expilo

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Pronunciation

  • Classical: [ɛkˈspiː.ɫoː][1]
  • Ecclesiastical: [ekˈspiː.lo][1]

Forms

expīlō (present infinitive expīlāre, perfect active expīlāvī, supine expīlātum); first conjugation[1]

Etymology

It is from Latin ex- + pīlō (“to rob”), beside compīlō.[2][1][3]

Earliest recorded meaning

Its first quotation is in Plautus' Asinaria: to drink with a girlfriend by day and to rob her.[2]

Semantic evolution

It is to rob, plunder or despoil a person or a place: Cicero writes of a king robbed and plundered, of plundering a temple of Apollo, and of draining the treasury.[2][4] Livy has plundered treasures, and Tacitus allies stripped of their goods.[2] Lewis & Short call it classical and give compīlō, spoliō, dīripiō and populor as synonyms.[4]

Timeline

  • c. 250–184 BC – Plautus of robbing a girlfriend.[2][5]
  • 81–43 BC – Cicero of a plundered king and temple.[2][4][5]
  • 59 BC–17 AD – Livy of plundered treasures.[2][5]
  • 98–115 AD – Tacitus of despoiled allies.[2][5]

Meanings

Verb

  1. To rob, plunder, pillage, despoil (a person or place).[2][4][1]

Word family

  • expīlātiō
  • expīlātor

Usage notes

The OLD and the TLL also record a separate expilō with a short i, made with pilō “to remove hair”, meaning to depilate or pluck;[2][3] Lucilius has it in a list of a courtesan's toilet.[2][3]

References

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