ito

Forms

itō (present infinitive itāre, perfect active itāvī); first conjugation, no passive, no supine stem^[1]

Etymology

It is from Latin eō¹ (“to go”) + -tō, a frequentative verb.^[2][3][1] Wiktionary takes it to go back to Proto-Italic *itāō.^[1]

Earliest recorded meaning

It is found first in Plautus' Mostellaria, of young men who keep going off to the legion (ad legionem cum itant).^[3][4]

Semantic evolution

It meant to go regularly or habitually somewhere.^[2][5] Cicero writes of giving up going out to dinners, and an edict of the censors on rhetoricians, quoted by Suetonius, speaks of the schools to which Romans sent their children.^[5][3] Pliny the Elder has a boy going to school, and Gellius speaks of senators going on foot to the senate house.^[5][3] In Ecclesiastical Latin it meant simply to go or move.^[6]

Timeline

• c. 250–184 BC – Plautus uses it of going to the legion.^[3][4]
• 81–43 BC – Cicero writes of going to dinners.^[3][5][4]
• 23/24–79 AD – Pliny the Elder uses it of a boy going to school.^[5][4]
• c. 165 AD – Gellius uses it of going to the senate house on foot.^[3][4]

Meanings

Verb

1. To go habitually or often (to a place); to keep going.^[2][3][5]
2. (Ecclesiastical Latin) To go, move.^[6]

Word family

• aditō
• initō
• itito

Related words

• eō

References

1. ^ a b c d e Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c 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. ^ a b c d e Köbler, Gerhard (2010), Lateinisches Abkunfts- und Wirkungswörterbuch für Altertum und Mittelalter, online ed., koeblergerhard.de
5. ^ a b c d e f Thesaurus linguae Latinae (1900–), Leipzig: Teubner; Berlin: De Gruyter; open-access ed., Munich: Bayerische Akademie der Wissenschaften
6. ^ a b Stelten, Leo F. (1995), Dictionary of Ecclesiastical Latin, Peabody, Mass.: Hendrickson