narratus

Forms

nārrātus m (genitive nārrātūs); fourth declension^[1]

Etymology

It is from Latin narrō + -tus, a fourth-declension action noun from the verb meaning “to tell, relate”.^[2][3][1] The verb narrō is a Proto-Italic formation from the adjective seen in gnārus “knowing”.^[4]

Earliest recorded meaning

Ovid has it first, in the Metamorphoses: the nymph Arethusa says that a fitting time will come for her to tell her tale (veniet narratibus hora tempestiva meis).^[3][5][6]

Semantic evolution

It is a poetic and post-Classical word.^[5] The TLL takes it as the act of telling in Ovid, but rather as the story told in Apuleius, whose narrator imagines a scrupulous reader finding fault with his account.^[3]

Timeline

• 43 BC–18 AD – Ovid uses it in the Metamorphoses.^[3][6]
• c. 125–175 AD – Apuleius uses it in his Metamorphoses of the story he is telling.^[3][7]

Meanings

Noun

1. A narrative, story, tale; the act of telling, narration.^[2][5][3]

Related words

• narrator
• narrativus

Usage notes

The fourth-declension noun is a separate word from the perfect participle narrātus, -a, -um “told”, which belongs to narrō.^[5][3][8]

References

1. ^ a b c d Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b Glare, P. G. W., ed. (2012), Oxford Latin Dictionary, 2nd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
3. ^ a b c d e f g 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 Lewis, Charlton T.; Short, Charles (1879), A Latin Dictionary, Oxford: Clarendon Press
6. ^ a b Köbler, Gerhard (2010), Lateinisches Abkunfts- und Wirkungswörterbuch für Altertum und Mittelalter, online ed., koeblergerhard.de
7. ^ Conte, Gian Biagio; Pianezzola, Emilio; Ranucci, Giuliano (2010), il Latino: Vocabolario della lingua latina, 3rd ed., Florence: Le Monnier
8. ^ Gaffiot, Félix (2016), Dictionnaire latin-français, new ed. by Gérard Gréco et al. (Gaffiot 2016), online ed.