impeccabilis

Forms

impeccābilis (neuter impeccābile); third-declension adjective^[1][2]

Etymology

It is formed from Latin in-² + peccō (“to make a mistake, sin”) + -bilis.^[1][3][4]

Earliest recorded meaning

Aulus Gellius, reporting a saying of Epictetus, writes that such a man will be faultless in most things.^[3][5][6]

Semantic evolution

In Gellius it means faultless;^[1][2] Christian writers used it for one who cannot or does not sin: it comes up in the dispute over Pelagius, and Marius Mercator glosses it as “without sin”.^[3] Medieval writers such as Albertus Magnus kept it.^[6] English impeccable (1530s), first “not capable of sin”, comes from French or directly from the Late Latin word; the sense “faultless” followed in the 1610s.^[4]

Timeline

• c. 165 AD – Aulus Gellius uses it for faultless.^[3][6]
• 354–430 AD – In Augustine's account of the trial of Pelagius it means sinless.^[3][6]
• 1530s – English borrows impeccable.^[4]

Meanings

Adjective

1. Faultless.^[1][2][5]
2. (Ecclesiastical Latin) Sinless, not liable to sin.^[3][2]

Related words

• English impeccable

References

1. ^ a b c d Glare, P. G. W., ed. (2012), Oxford Latin Dictionary, 2nd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
2. ^ a b c d Lewis, Charlton T.; Short, Charles (1879), A Latin Dictionary, Oxford: Clarendon Press
3. ^ a b c d e f Thesaurus linguae Latinae (1900–), Leipzig: Teubner; Berlin: De Gruyter; open-access ed., Munich: Bayerische Akademie der Wissenschaften
4. ^ a b c Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
5. ^ a b Georges, Karl Ernst (1913–1918), Ausführliches lateinisch-deutsches Handwörterbuch, 8th ed., ed. Heinrich Georges, Hannover; Leipzig: Hahn
6. ^ a b c d Köbler, Gerhard (2010), Lateinisches Abkunfts- und Wirkungswörterbuch für Altertum und Mittelalter, online ed., koeblergerhard.de