ingemisco

Forms

ingemīscō (present infinitive ingemīscere, perfect active ingemuī); third conjugation, no supine stem^[1] The OLD and the TLL file it under the spelling ingemēscō.^[2][3]

Etymology

It is from Latin ingemō (“to groan over”) + -īscō, an inchoative verb.^[2][1] ingemō is a compound of in- and gemō (“to groan”), whose origin de Vaan thinks uncertain: most scholars connect it with Ancient Greek γέμω (gémō, “to be full”), but Vine prefers Ancient Greek γέγωνα (gégōna, “to shout so as to be heard”) and a root meaning "call".^[4]

Earliest recorded meaning

Cicero uses it in the Tusculan Disputations, saying that Spartan boys do not groan, and in the Philippics, asking why someone groans that Dolabella has been declared a public enemy.^[5]

Semantic evolution

It means to begin to groan or moan, in pain or grief:^[2] Cicero translates a line of Sophocles with it, of groaning under no misfortune,^[5] and Livy imagines how our fathers would groan.^[5] Virgil has someone groan on finding the light,^[5] and Curtius Rufus someone groaning at another's death.^[5] Of things it is to creak, as a threshold groaning under a sacred body in Ovid,^[2] or fire in the Hercules Oetaeus.^[5] Transitively it is to groan over: Martial, and Apuleius of someone often silently lamenting another's lot.^[5][2] Pliny the Younger uses it with the dative, of groaning over what one suffered.^[5] Ammianus has the gerundive ingemīscendus, lamentable.^[5] Stelten gives "wail, sigh, groan" for Church Latin.^[6]

Timeline

• 81–43 BC – Cicero of Spartan boys who do not groan.^[5]
• 70–19 BC – Virgil of groaning on finding the light.^[5]
• 43 BC–18 AD – Ovid of a groaning threshold.^[2]
• c. 125–175 AD – Apuleius of lamenting another's lot.^[2][5]

Meanings

Verb

1. To begin to groan or moan (in pain or grief), sigh.^[2][5][1]
2. (of things) To creak, groan.^[2][5]
3. (transitive) To groan at or over, lament.^[2][5][1]

Related words

• ingemō
• gemō
• gemitus

References

1. ^ a b c d e f Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f g h i j 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. ^ 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 e f g h i j k l m n o Lewis, Charlton T.; Short, Charles (1879), A Latin Dictionary, Oxford: Clarendon Press
6. ^ Stelten, Leo F. (1995), Dictionary of Ecclesiastical Latin, Peabody, Mass.: Hendrickson