mendacium

Forms

mendācium n (genitive mendāciī or mendācī); second declension^[1]

Etymology

It is formed from mendāx (“lying”) with the suffix -ium.^[2][3][1] ⟨Mendāx⟩ belongs with mendum (“fault, blemish”), which de Vaan traces to Proto-Italic *mendo-, perhaps cognate with Old Irish mind (“sign, mark”); he mentions a link with the root of “to think” only as a theoretical possibility.^[4]

Earliest recorded meaning

Köbler gives Plautus as its first author,^[5] as “if I tell a lie” in the Amphitruo.^[2]

Semantic evolution

It is a lie or falsehood, as Plautus' “to tell someone a lie” and Cicero's “to deceive by a lie”, and also a fiction, as Ovid's lies of poets and of rumour.^[2][6] It is also a false impression or illusion, as Cicero's error that lies “in opinion, not in the eyes”.^[2]

The word was used in the Bible, councils and Germanic law codes.^[5] Church Latin glosses it “lie, untruth, lying, falsehood”.^[7]

Timeline

• c. 250–184 BC – Plautus of telling a lie.^[2][6][5]
• 81–43 BC – Cicero of a false impression.^[2][5]
• 43 BC–18 AD – Ovid of poets' fictions.^[6][5]

Meanings

Noun

1. A lie, untruth, falsehood; a fiction.^[2][1][6]
2. A false impression, illusion, counterfeit.^[2][1]

Word family

• mendāciloquus
• mendāciunculum

Related words

• mendāciloquium
• mendācitās
• mendāciter
• mendāx
• mendum
• English mendacity

References

1. ^ a b c d e f Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f g h Glare, P. G. W., ed. (2012), Oxford Latin Dictionary, 2nd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
3. ^ Thesaurus linguae Latinae (1900–), Leipzig: Teubner; Berlin: De Gruyter; open-access ed., Munich: Bayerische Akademie der Wissenschaften
4. ^ de Vaan, Michiel (2008), Etymological Dictionary of Latin and the other Italic Languages, Leiden Indo-European Etymological Dictionary Series 7, Leiden; Boston: Brill
5. ^ a b c d e Köbler, Gerhard (2010), Lateinisches Abkunfts- und Wirkungswörterbuch für Altertum und Mittelalter, online ed., koeblergerhard.de
6. ^ a b c d Lewis, Charlton T.; Short, Charles (1879), A Latin Dictionary, Oxford: Clarendon Press
7. ^ Stelten, Leo F. (1995), Dictionary of Ecclesiastical Latin, Peabody, Mass.: Hendrickson