inedia

Forms

inedia f (genitive inediae); first declension^[1]

Etymology

It is formed from the negative in- (“not”), edō¹ (“to eat”) and the suffix -ia.^[2][3] De Vaan traces edō¹ to Proto-Indo-European *h₁éd-mi (“I eat”), cognate with Oscan edum (“to eat”), Ancient Greek ἔδω (édō, “to eat”) and Hittite ed-zi (“eats”).^[4]

Earliest recorded meaning

The TLL and de Vaan find it first in Plautus,^[5][4] whose Curculio has darkness coming over the eyes and knees giving way from want of food.^[6]

Semantic evolution

It is the condition of having no food, starvation, and above all abstaining from food, voluntarily or not: Cicero has a man leaving life by starvation who is called back by his friends, and someone killed by lack of sleep and food.^[2][6] Pliny the Younger uses inediā vītam fīnīre, to starve oneself to death.^[6] Celsus speaks of bearing a fast,^[6] and in medicine it is also an inability to keep food down.^[2] Döderlein distinguishes it from famēs, hunger from want of food, and ēsuriēs, hunger from an empty stomach: inedia is simply not eating, mostly by choice.^[7] Stelten gives “fasting, hunger, abstinence”.^[8]

Timeline

• c. 250–184 BC – Plautus, of fainting from hunger.^[6][5][3]
• 81–43 BC – Cicero, of starving to death.^[2][6][3]
• 14–37 AD – Celsus, of fasting and of a medical condition.^[2][6][3]

Meanings

Noun

1. Want of food, starvation.^[2][1]
2. Abstinence from food, fasting.^[2][6][1][8]
3. (medicine) Inability to retain food.^[2]

Related words

• edō¹
• famēs
• ēsuriēs

References

1. ^ a b c d e Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f g h Glare, P. G. W., ed. (2012), Oxford Latin Dictionary, 2nd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
3. ^ a b c d Köbler, Gerhard (2010), Lateinisches Abkunfts- und Wirkungswörterbuch für Altertum und Mittelalter, online ed., koeblergerhard.de
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 Thesaurus linguae Latinae (1900–), Leipzig: Teubner; Berlin: De Gruyter; open-access ed., Munich: Bayerische Akademie der Wissenschaften
6. ^ a b c d e f g h Lewis, Charlton T.; Short, Charles (1879), A Latin Dictionary, Oxford: Clarendon Press
7. ^ Döderlein, Ludwig (1874), Döderlein’s Hand-book of Latin Synonymes, tr. H. H. Arnold, Andover: W. F. Draper
8. ^ a b Stelten, Leo F. (1995), Dictionary of Ecclesiastical Latin, Peabody, Mass.: Hendrickson