exsurgo

Forms

exsurgō (present infinitive exsurgere, perfect active exsurrēxī, supine exsurrēctum); third conjugation^[1] It is often spelled exurgō.^[2][3][4] Plautus has the archaic present passive infinitive exsurgier.^[3]

Etymology

It is from Latin ex- + surgō (“to rise”).^[2][4] De Vaan lists ⟨surgō⟩, from ⟨sub⟩ and ⟨regō⟩, under regō (“to direct”), which he traces to Proto-Italic *reg-e/o- and Proto-Indo-European *h₃reǵ- (“to stretch, direct”), cognate with Old Irish a-t·raig (“to stand up”).^[5]

Earliest recorded meaning

The OLD's earliest example is a tragedy of Ennius: “rise, herald, get the people to listen”.^[2]

Semantic evolution

It means “to rise, stand up”, from one's knees or from an ambush, and to get up from bed: in Plautus someone got up briskly in the dead of night.^[2][3] Figuratively it is to bestir oneself, take action, as Cicero's anxious “when and where shall we be able to rise?”, and to rise in revolt, as Livy's plebs.^[2] It is used of things that swell or rise up, of complaints that spring up, and of rising above one's grief.^[2]

Church Latin glosses it “arise, awaken”.^[6]

Timeline

• 204–169 BC – Ennius of a herald rising.^[2][7]
• c. 250–184 BC – Plautus of getting up.^[2][7]
• 81–43 BC – Cicero of taking action.^[2][7]
• 59 BC–17 AD – Livy of a rising of the plebs.^[2][7]

Meanings

Verb

1. To rise, stand up; to get up from bed.^[2][3][1][6]
2. To bestir oneself, take action; to rise in revolt.^[2][1]
3. Of things, to swell, rise up; to spring up.^[2]
4. To rise above, overcome; to recover.^[2][1]

Word family

• exsurrectio

Related words

• surgō
• regō

References

1. ^ a b c d e f Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n Glare, P. G. W., ed. (2012), Oxford Latin Dictionary, 2nd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
3. ^ a b c d Lewis, Charlton T.; Short, Charles (1879), A Latin Dictionary, Oxford: Clarendon Press
4. ^ a b 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 Stelten, Leo F. (1995), Dictionary of Ecclesiastical Latin, Peabody, Mass.: Hendrickson
7. ^ a b c d Köbler, Gerhard (2010), Lateinisches Abkunfts- und Wirkungswörterbuch für Altertum und Mittelalter, online ed., koeblergerhard.de