lampo

Forms

lampō (present infinitive lampāre, perfect active lampāvī); first conjugation, no passive, no supine stem^[1]

Etymology

It is borrowed from Ancient Greek λάμπω (lámpō, “to shine”).^[1][2][3] The TLL lists its Romance continuants, among them Tuscan lampare, Sardinian lampare, Catalan llampar and Spanish lampar.^[2]

Earliest recorded meaning

It first appears in Cassiodorus,^[2][3][4] who uses it both of light, as when an angel's brightness shines over the whole world, and figuratively of eloquence.^[2][5][6]

Semantic evolution

In Cassiodorus it means to shine or gleam, literally and figuratively,^[2][7] and Conte also records a transitive use, to light up something.^[6] The Latin version of Josephus' Antiquities has it of flashes of lightning.^[2] It is a word of Ecclesiastical Latin;^[5][1] medieval poets used it of virtue or merit that shines like a star,^[8] and the Czech-Latin lexicon glosses it “to shine, gleam”.^[9]

Timeline

• c. 485–c. 580 AD – Cassiodorus uses it of shining light and of shining eloquence.^[2][5][4]
• Medieval Latin – Medieval poems and hymns use it of things that shine like stars.^[8]

Meanings

Verb

1. (intransitive) To shine, gleam.^[2][3][7]
2. (figurative) To shine, be brilliant (of eloquence).^[5][7]
3. (transitive) To illuminate, light up.^[6]

Word family

• lampabilis

References

1. ^ a b c d e Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f g h Thesaurus linguae Latinae (1900–), Leipzig: Teubner; Berlin: De Gruyter; open-access ed., Munich: Bayerische Akademie der Wissenschaften
3. ^ a b c Georges, Karl Ernst (1913–1918), Ausführliches lateinisch-deutsches Handwörterbuch, 8th ed., ed. Heinrich Georges, Hannover; Leipzig: Hahn
4. ^ a b Köbler, Gerhard (2010), Lateinisches Abkunfts- und Wirkungswörterbuch für Altertum und Mittelalter, online ed., koeblergerhard.de
5. ^ a b c d Lewis, Charlton T.; Short, Charles (1879), A Latin Dictionary, Oxford: Clarendon Press
6. ^ a b c Conte, Gian Biagio; Pianezzola, Emilio; Ranucci, Giuliano (2010), il Latino: Vocabolario della lingua latina, 3rd ed., Florence: Le Monnier
7. ^ a b c Gaffiot, Félix (2016), Dictionnaire latin-français, new ed. by Gérard Gréco et al. (Gaffiot 2016), online ed.
8. ^ a b Novum Glossarium Mediae Latinitatis ab anno DCCC usque ad annum MCC (1957–), Copenhagen / Geneva / Paris: Union Académique Internationale; IRHT
9. ^ Latinitatis medii aevi lexicon Bohemorum / Slovník středověké latiny v českých zemích (1977–), Prague: Academia; electronic version, Institute of Philosophy of the Czech Academy of Sciences