lamentor

Forms

lāmentor (present infinitive lāmentārī or lāmentārier, perfect active lāmentātus sum); first conjugation, deponent^[1] Plautus has the infinitive lāmentārier.^[2][3] An active lāmentō is also recorded.^[3][4]

Etymology

It is from Latin lāmenta (“wailing, laments”) + -or.^[2][3][1] De Vaan traces lāmenta to Proto-Italic *lāmnto- (“howling”) and Proto-Indo-European *leh₂-mn-to- (“howling, crying”), the root of lātrō (“to bark”), with cognates such as Lithuanian lóti (“to bark”).^[5]

Earliest recorded meaning

Ennius and Plautus use it first:^[2][4] the Annals have someone who laments in his heart,^[2] and Plautus joins it with being tormented.^[4]

Semantic evolution

Intransitively it is to cry out in grief, to wail: Plautus and Terence use it so,^[4] Cicero says an orator can make stones weep and wail,^[4] and Suetonius joins it with beating the breast.^[4] Transitively it is to lament for: Plautus' character bewails sixty minae, a character in Terence his dead mother,^[2][4] and Cicero calls this life a death he could lament, and speaks of no one being left to mourn the disaster of so great an empire.^[4] Pacuvius says a man should complain of bad fortune, not lament it, since weeping belongs to a woman's nature.^[4] With an accusative and infinitive it is to complain that: in Plautus, when someone laments he has no money, he is told to complain to his stepmother;^[2] Horace has poets lamenting that their labours go unnoticed.^[4] Silius Italicus uses the participle passively, of fates long bewailed through the city.^[2] The TLL also records an active lāmentō.^[3] Döderlein ranks the words for weeping: lacrimāre is to shed tears, plōrāre to wail aloud, with flēre between them.^[6]

Timeline

• 204–169 BC – Ennius of lamenting in one's heart.^[2]
• c. 250–184 BC – Plautus of wailing and bewailing.^[2][4]
• 190–159 BC – Terence of lamenting a dead mother.^[4]
• 81–43 BC – Cicero of lamenting a disaster.^[4]

Meanings

Verb

1. To cry out in grief, wail, lament, moan.^[2][4][1]
2. To lament for, bewail, bemoan;^[2][4][1] (with accusative and infinitive) to complain that.^[2][4][1]

Word family

• lāmentābilis
• lāmentātiō
• lāmentātor
• lāmentātrīx

Related words

• lāmenta
• lāmentum
• lātrō
• plōrō

References

1. ^ a b c d e f g Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l 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 f g h i j k l m n o p Lewis, Charlton T.; Short, Charles (1879), A Latin Dictionary, Oxford: Clarendon Press
5. ^ de Vaan, Michiel (2008), Etymological Dictionary of Latin and the other Italic Languages, Leiden Indo-European Etymological Dictionary Series 7, Leiden; Boston: Brill
6. ^ Döderlein, Ludwig (1874), Döderlein’s Hand-book of Latin Synonymes, tr. H. H. Arnold, Andover: W. F. Draper