lacteo

Forms

lacteō (present infinitive lactēre); second conjugation, no perfect or supine stems^[1] It is used almost only in the present participle lactēns.^[2][3]

Etymology

It is from Latin lac (“milk”) + -eō;^[4][1] the TLL takes it as a back-formation from its present participle.^[3] De Vaan traces lac to Proto-Italic *(g)lagt- and Proto-Indo-European *glg-t- (“milk”).^[5] Cognate with Ancient Greek γάλα (gála, “milk”).^[5]

Earliest recorded meaning

Cicero has it of Romulus as a little suckling child gaping at the wolf's teats, parvus atque lactens, uberibus lupinis inhians.^[2]

Semantic evolution

It means to suck milk, to be a suckling: Cicero also has the infant Jupiter suckling and a suckling victim for sacrifice,^[2] and Ovid a suckling calf and sucklings in general.^[2] Ovid compares the young spring to a suckling child.^[2] It also means to be full of milk or juice, to be milky or sappy:^[4] Virgil has crops swelling milky on the green stalk, Pliny the Elder a milky lettuce, and Palladius young greens full of sap.^[2] Celsus uses the neuter plural lactentia as a noun, milk foods.^[2] The TLL notes that ordinary speech tended to avoid the verb.^[3] In Church Latin it is to suck, to be a suckling.^[6]

Timeline

• 81–43 BC – Cicero, of Romulus as a suckling.^[2][7]
• 70–19 BC – Virgil, of milky crops.^[2][7]
• 43 BC–18 AD – Ovid, of a suckling calf.^[2][7]
• 14–37 AD – Celsus, lactentia, milk foods.^[2][7]

Meanings

Verb

1. To suck milk, to be a suckling.^[2][1][6]
2. To be full of milk or juice, to be milky or sappy.^[4][2][1]

Word family

• collacteus
• lactēscō

Related words

• lac
• lactō
• lacteus

References

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