fastidiosus

Forms

fastīdiōsus (feminine fastīdiōsa, neuter fastīdiōsum); first/second-declension adjective^[1]

Etymology

It is from Latin fastīdium (“disdain, aversion”) + -ōsus.^[2][3][1][4] De Vaan explains that noun as a compound of fastus² (“haughtiness”) and the root of taedet (“it wearies”), shortened by haplology.^[4][5] He adds that the only reasonable connection for that noun is with a word for “top”, which would need a shift of meaning from “top” to “haughtiness”.^[4]

Earliest recorded meaning

It is found from Plautus on,^[4][6] meaning “hard to please”: in the Miles gloriosus a speaker is worried because someone is so particular.^[2]

Semantic evolution

It described people who feel disgust or aversion: Lucilius uses it of being squeamish about food, and Varro of cows that turn fussy.^[2][3] More often it meant hard to satisfy, exacting, or, with a genitive, discontented with something; the Rhetorica ad Herennium calls the sense of hearing the most fastidious.^[2][3] Cicero uses it of haughty, disdainful minds that cannot bear the least authority.^[2]

Horace has it in the active sense of something wearisome or nauseating.^[2] In Ecclesiastical Latin it means fastidious or disdainful.^[7] English fastidious, first “full of pride”, comes from it,^[5] and it survives in fastidioso and as the learned fastidieux.^[1]

Timeline

• c. 250–184 BC – Plautus uses it of a person hard to please.^[2][6]
• c. 180–102 BC – Lucilius uses it of squeamishness about food.^[2][6]
• 81–43 BC – Cicero uses it of haughty minds.^[2][6]
• 65–8 BC – Horace uses it of something nauseating.^[2][6]
• mid-15th century – English borrows it as fastidious.^[5]

Meanings

Adjective

1. Squeamish, showing aversion to food.^[2][3]
2. Hard to satisfy, exacting, particular;^[2][3] (with genitive) not content with.^[2]
3. Haughty, disdainful.^[2][3]
4. Wearisome, nauseating.^[2][1]

Related words

• fastīdium
• fastīdiō

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 o Glare, P. G. W., ed. (2012), Oxford Latin Dictionary, 2nd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
3. ^ a b c d e f Lewis, Charlton T.; Short, Charles (1879), A Latin Dictionary, Oxford: Clarendon Press
4. ^ 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
5. ^ a b c Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
6. ^ a b c d e Köbler, Gerhard (2010), Lateinisches Abkunfts- und Wirkungswörterbuch für Altertum und Mittelalter, online ed., koeblergerhard.de
7. ^ Stelten, Leo F. (1995), Dictionary of Ecclesiastical Latin, Peabody, Mass.: Hendrickson