habito

Forms

habitō (present infinitive habitāre, perfect active habitāvī, supine habitātum); first conjugation^[1] Ovid has the genitive plural of the participle habitantum.^[2]

Etymology

It is the frequentative of habeō (“to have, hold”), formed with -itō.^[3][4][1][5] De Vaan traces habeō to Proto-Italic *χabē- (“has taken, has”) and Proto-Indo-European *gʰh₁bʰ- (“to take”).^[4] Clifford Weber, reported by Wiktionary, notes that the simple verb sometimes meant “to dwell” in early Latin.^[1]

Earliest recorded meaning

De Vaan dates it from Plautus,^[4] who opens the Amphitruo with in superiōre quī habitō cēnāculō, “I who live in the upper storey”.^[3]

Semantic evolution

As a frequentative it first meant “to have often”, and Varro uses it of wearing clothes or long hair habitually, a rare early sense.^[3][2] The usual sense is “to live, dwell” (Plautus: hīc habitō), with an object “to inhabit” (Virgil: humilēs habitāre casās, “to live in humble cottages”), and with an adverb or a price “to be housed, lodge” (Cicero: he wanted to live in a large and splendid house).^[3][1] With exaggeration it is “to live” somewhere, to spend all one's time there (Cicero: habitābant in rōstrīs, “they practically lived on the speakers' platform”), and figuratively “to linger”.^[3][1]

Döderlein contrasts incolere, to inhabit a country as its citizen, with habitāre, to dwell in a house.^[6] Church Latin glosses it “live, dwell, abide, inhabit”.^[7]

Timeline

• c. 250–184 BC – Plautus: in superiōre quī habitō cēnāculō.^[3][4][8]
• 116–27 BC – Varro of wearing long hair.^[3][8]
• 81–43 BC – Cicero: habitābant in rōstrīs.^[3][8]
• 70–19 BC – Virgil: humilēs habitāre casās.^[3][8]

Meanings

Verb

1. To live, dwell, reside.^[3][2][1][7]
2. To inhabit, live in.^[3][7]
3. To be housed, lodge (in a certain way).^[3]
4. To spend all one's time (in a place); to linger.^[3][1]
5. (early Latin) To wear habitually.^[3][2]

Word family

• cohabitō
• habitābilis
• habitāculum
• habitātiō
• habitātor
• habitātrīx
• inhabitō
• habitātiuncula
• habitūrium

Related words

• habeō
• habitus
• incolō

References

1. ^ a b c d e f g h i Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d Lewis, Charlton T.; Short, Charles (1879), A Latin Dictionary, Oxford: Clarendon Press
3. ^ 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
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. ^ Thesaurus linguae Latinae (1900–), Leipzig: Teubner; Berlin: De Gruyter; open-access ed., Munich: Bayerische Akademie der Wissenschaften
6. ^ Döderlein, Ludwig (1874), Döderlein’s Hand-book of Latin Synonymes, tr. H. H. Arnold, Andover: W. F. Draper
7. ^ a b c Stelten, Leo F. (1995), Dictionary of Ecclesiastical Latin, Peabody, Mass.: Hendrickson
8. ^ a b c d Köbler, Gerhard (2010), Lateinisches Abkunfts- und Wirkungswörterbuch für Altertum und Mittelalter, online ed., koeblergerhard.de