impavidus

Forms

impavidus (feminine impavida, neuter impavidum); first/second-declension adjective^[1] It is also spelled inpavidus.^[2][3]

Etymology

It is from Latin in- + pavidus (“fearful”).^[2][1] pavidus is made from paveō (“to be frightened”), which de Vaan traces to Proto-Italic *paw-ē- (“to be frightened”) and Proto-Indo-European *pou-eh₁- (“to fear”), with Celtic cognates such as Old Irish omun (“fear”).^[4]

Earliest recorded meaning

Köbler dates it from Virgil,^[5] who has the boys playing as they hang from the she-wolf and fearlessly licking their mother.^[3][6]

Semantic evolution

It means fearless, undaunted.^[2][3] Lewis & Short note it is not frequent before the Augustan period and not found in Cicero or Caesar.^[3] Horace says that if the world should break and fall, its ruins will strike the just man undismayed, and calls Teucer and Sthenelus fearless.^[3] The TLL records it of animals as well as of people.^[6]

Timeline

• 70–19 BC – Virgil of the fearless twins.^[3][5]
• 65–8 BC – Horace of the just man undismayed.^[3]

Meanings

Adjective

1. Fearless, dauntless, undaunted, intrepid.^[2][3][1]

Related words

• pavidus
• paveō
• intrepidus

References

1. ^ a b c d e Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d Glare, P. G. W., ed. (2012), Oxford Latin Dictionary, 2nd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
3. ^ a b c d e f g h Lewis, Charlton T.; Short, Charles (1879), A Latin Dictionary, Oxford: Clarendon Press
4. ^ 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 Köbler, Gerhard (2010), Lateinisches Abkunfts- und Wirkungswörterbuch für Altertum und Mittelalter, online ed., koeblergerhard.de
6. ^ a b Thesaurus linguae Latinae (1900–), Leipzig: Teubner; Berlin: De Gruyter; open-access ed., Munich: Bayerische Akademie der Wissenschaften