fidens
Forms
fīdēns (genitive fīdentis, comparative fīdentior); third-declension one-termination adjective[1]
Etymology
Used as an adjective, it is the present participle from Latin fīdō (“to trust”).[1][2][3] De Vaan traces fīdō to Proto-Italic *feiþe- (“to trust”) and Proto-Indo-European *bʰeidʰ-e/o- (“to trust”).[4]
Earliest recorded meaning
Köbler dates it from Cicero,[5] who in the Tusculan Disputations says that the brave man is also fīdēns, since cōnfīdēns is used of a fault, and that he who is fīdēns has no fear.[6]
Semantic evolution
It means self-confident, assured, bold, and with the genitive confident in something.[1] Cicero writes in a letter that a remark is the evidence not of a confident man but of a frightened one,[6] and in Virgil's Aeneid someone is told to meet the enemy with a bold breast.[6] The OLD records the comparative fīdentior.[1] Stelten gives "faithful, sincere, true" for Church Latin, with the adverb fīdenter.[7]
Timeline
Meanings
Adjective
- Self-confident, assured, bold;[1][6] (with genitive) confident in.[1][6]
- (Ecclesiastical Latin) Faithful, sincere, true.[7]
Related words
References
- ^ a b c d e f Glare, P. G. W., ed. (2012), Oxford Latin Dictionary, 2nd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
- ^ Lewis, Charlton T.; Short, Charles (1879), A Latin Dictionary, Oxford: Clarendon Press
- ^ Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
- ^ de Vaan, Michiel (2008), Etymological Dictionary of Latin and the other Italic Languages, Leiden Indo-European Etymological Dictionary Series 7, Leiden; Boston: Brill
- ^ a b Köbler, Gerhard (2010), Lateinisches Abkunfts- und Wirkungswörterbuch für Altertum und Mittelalter, online ed., koeblergerhard.de
- ^ a b c d e f g Thesaurus linguae Latinae (1900–), Leipzig: Teubner; Berlin: De Gruyter; open-access ed., Munich: Bayerische Akademie der Wissenschaften
- ^ a b Stelten, Leo F. (1995), Dictionary of Ecclesiastical Latin, Peabody, Mass.: Hendrickson