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immanitas

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Etymology and origin of the Latin word immanitas

Confidence
Probable
Formation
Derivation
First attested
1st century BC, Claudius Quadrigarius
Ultimate origin
Latin (mānus)
Etymology tree
inherited borrowed derived
Latin immanis
Latin immanitas

Forms

immānitās f (genitive immānitātis); third declension[1] It is also spelled inm-.[2]

Etymology

It is from Latin immānis (“huge, savage”) + -tās.[2][3] ⟨Immānis⟩ is the negative of an old adjective mānus (“good”), “not good”.[4][1] De Vaan traces ⟨mānus⟩ to Proto-Italic *māno- and Proto-Indo-European *meh₂-no- (“good”), cognate with Old Irish maith (“good”), but calls the further root uncertain.[4]

Earliest recorded meaning

Köbler's first source is Claudius Quadrigarius,[5] who says no one dared come forward because of a man's great size and frightful looks.[2]

Semantic evolution

It is savage character, brutality, and of persons a monster: Cicero asks what plague, what monster the province had suffered.[2] Of actions it is enormity, barbarity, as in Cicero's “the enormity of so great a crime”.[2] It is also vast size, hugeness, rarer but classical, as in a surveyor's huge tracts of land and Gellius' serpent of unheard-of size.[2][6]

Church Latin glosses it “cruelty, fierceness”.[7]

Timeline

  • 1st century BC – Claudius Quadrigarius of a frightful man.[2][5]
  • 81–43 BC – Cicero of monstrous men and crimes.[2][5]
  • c. 165 AD – Gellius of a huge serpent.[6][5]

Meanings

Noun

  1. Savage character, brutality, barbarity; a monster.[2][6][1][7]
  2. Enormity of an action.[2][1]
  3. Vast size, hugeness, immensity.[2][6][1]

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. ^ Thesaurus linguae Latinae (1900–), Leipzig: Teubner; Berlin: De Gruyter; open-access ed., Munich: Bayerische Akademie der Wissenschaften
  4. ^ a b 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 d Köbler, Gerhard (2010), Lateinisches Abkunfts- und Wirkungswörterbuch für Altertum und Mittelalter, online ed., koeblergerhard.de
  6. ^ a b c d Lewis, Charlton T.; Short, Charles (1879), A Latin Dictionary, Oxford: Clarendon Press
  7. ^ a b Stelten, Leo F. (1995), Dictionary of Ecclesiastical Latin, Peabody, Mass.: Hendrickson
Cite this entry

“Immanitas.” Etymologically, 19 Oct. 2026, etymologically.com/la/immanitas. Accessed 20 Oct. 2026.

Last edited on . ·