navigo

Forms

nāvigō (present infinitive nāvigāre, perfect active nāvigāvī, supine nāvigātum); first conjugation^[1]

Etymology

It is formed from nāvis (“ship”) and agō (“to drive”): “to drive a ship”.^[2][3][4] De Vaan traces ⟨nāvis⟩ to Proto-Italic *nau- and Proto-Indo-European *neh₂-u- (“ship”), cognate with Ancient Greek ναῦς (naûs, “ship”) and Sanskrit नौ (náu-, “ship”), and ⟨agō⟩ to Proto-Indo-European *h₂eǵ-e/o- (“to drive, lead”).^[5]

Earliest recorded meaning

Plautus, Bacchides: nē nāvigārem tandem hōc aetātis senex, “so that I, an old man at my age, should not go to sea”.^[2]

Semantic evolution

It is to go by ship, voyage or sail, and of things to go by sea: Cicero says the whole weight of the war nāvigāvit under Pompey's command with astonishing speed.^[2] Of a ship it is to sail, and Pliny uses it of the nautilus.^[2] With an accusative it is to sail across, as Virgil's hostile people sailing the Tyrrhenian sea, and in the jurists to sail a ship.^[2]

Church Latin glosses it “sail, navigate”.^[6] English navigate (1580s) is a back-formation from navigation or comes from the participle nāvigātus.^[7]

Timeline

• c. 250–184 BC – Plautus of an old man going to sea.^[2][8]
• 81–43 BC – Cicero of a war carried by sea.^[2][8]
• 70–19 BC – Virgil, transitive, of sailing a sea.^[2][8]
• 1580s – English navigate.^[7]

Meanings

Verb

1. To sail, go by sea, voyage.^[2][1][6]
2. (of a ship) To sail.^[2]
3. (transitive) To sail across, navigate; to sail (a ship).^[2][1]

Related words

• nāvis
• agō
• nauta
• English navigate

References

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