inverto

Forms

invertō (present infinitive invertere, perfect active invertī, supine inversum); third conjugation^[1] An older spelling is invortō.^[2][3]

Etymology

It is from Latin in- + vertō (“to turn”).^[2][1][3] vertō goes back to Proto-Italic *wertō and Proto-Indo-European *wert- (“to turn”).^[1]

Earliest recorded meaning

The TLL dates it from Terence.^[3] Terence has words turned to their opposite meaning.^[2][4]

Semantic evolution

It is to turn upside down or inside out: Cicero has a ring turned round, and ⟨manus inversa⟩ is the back of the hand.^[2] Virgil uses it of bulls turning the soil, and Horace of a wind that overturns the sea.^[2] Figuratively it is to turn a thing into its opposite: Horace writes that we pervert the virtues themselves, and Cicero of reversing an order.^[2] It is also to change into something else, and Tacitus uses it of rephrasing a text.^[2] Church Latin glosses it to turn about, turn over, invert.^[5] English inverse comes from its past participle, from the mid-15th century, and invert from the verb, from the 1530s, perhaps through French.^[6]

Timeline

• 190–159 BC – Terence of words used in the opposite sense.^[2][3][4]
• 81–43 BC – Cicero of a ring turned round and of a reversed order.^[2][4]
• 70–19 BC – Virgil of turning the soil.^[2][4]
• 98–115 AD – Tacitus of rephrasing a text.^[2][4]
• mid-15th century – English inverse is formed from its past participle.^[6]

Meanings

Verb

1. To turn upside down or inside out, invert; to turn over the soil; to upset, overturn.^[2][7][1][5]
2. To turn into the opposite, pervert; to reverse an order; of words, to use them ironically in the opposite sense.^[2][7][1]
3. To change, alter; to paraphrase, translate.^[2][1]

Word family

• inversiō
• inversor
• inversūra

Related words

• vertō
• English invert
• English inverse

References

1. ^ a b c d e f g h Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n Glare, P. G. W., ed. (2012), Oxford Latin Dictionary, 2nd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
3. ^ a b c d Thesaurus linguae Latinae (1900–), Leipzig: Teubner; Berlin: De Gruyter; open-access ed., Munich: Bayerische Akademie der Wissenschaften
4. ^ a b c d e Köbler, Gerhard (2010), Lateinisches Abkunfts- und Wirkungswörterbuch für Altertum und Mittelalter, online ed., koeblergerhard.de
5. ^ a b Stelten, Leo F. (1995), Dictionary of Ecclesiastical Latin, Peabody, Mass.: Hendrickson
6. ^ a b Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
7. ^ a b Lewis, Charlton T.; Short, Charles (1879), A Latin Dictionary, Oxford: Clarendon Press