negito

Forms

negitō (present infinitive negitāre, perfect active negitāvī, supine negitātum); first conjugation^[1]

Etymology

It is from Latin negō (“to deny, refuse”) + -itō, a frequentative verb.^[2][3][4][5] The TLL describes its force as intensive: to deny insistently.^[5]

Earliest recorded meaning

It is first found in Plautus,^[2][5] in the Mercator with an accusative and infinitive: negitāre adeō mē nātum suom, “kept denying that I was his son”.^[2][3]

Semantic evolution

It meant to deny again and again, with an accusative and infinitive or absolutely: in the Bacchides a speaker can barely keep saying no,^[2][6] Lucretius uses it with an infinitive clause,^[2][4] Cicero of someone who had denied for many years that a criterion of truth and falsehood existed,^[2][7] and Horace's Sabine shakes his head and keeps saying no, renuit negitatque Sabellus.^[2][7] Sallust uses it in the sense “to refuse repeatedly”: the king at first keeps refusing and only gives way after being pressed many times.^[2][4] Lewis and Short call it very rare.^[3]

In Ecclesiastical Latin it is glossed “to deny frequently”.^[8]

Timeline

• c. 250–184 BC – Plautus uses it of persistent denial.^[2][9]
• 96–55 BC – Lucretius uses it with an accusative and infinitive.^[2][9]
• 86–34 BC – Sallust uses it of refusing repeatedly.^[2][9]
• 65–8 BC – Horace pairs it with renuit, “shakes his head”.^[2][9]

Meanings

Verb

1. To deny repeatedly or persistently.^[2][3][4]
2. To refuse repeatedly.^[2]

References

1. ^ a b c Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n Glare, P. G. W., ed. (2012), Oxford Latin Dictionary, 2nd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
3. ^ a b c d Lewis, Charlton T.; Short, Charles (1879), A Latin Dictionary, Oxford: Clarendon Press
4. ^ a b c d Georges, Karl Ernst (1913–1918), Ausführliches lateinisch-deutsches Handwörterbuch, 8th ed., ed. Heinrich Georges, Hannover; Leipzig: Hahn
5. ^ a b c Thesaurus linguae Latinae (1900–), Leipzig: Teubner; Berlin: De Gruyter; open-access ed., Munich: Bayerische Akademie der Wissenschaften
6. ^ Gaffiot, Félix (2016), Dictionnaire latin-français, new ed. by Gérard Gréco et al. (Gaffiot 2016), online ed.
7. ^ a b Conte, Gian Biagio; Pianezzola, Emilio; Ranucci, Giuliano (2010), il Latino: Vocabolario della lingua latina, 3rd ed., Florence: Le Monnier
8. ^ Stelten, Leo F. (1995), Dictionary of Ecclesiastical Latin, Peabody, Mass.: Hendrickson
9. ^ a b c d Köbler, Gerhard (2010), Lateinisches Abkunfts- und Wirkungswörterbuch für Altertum und Mittelalter, online ed., koeblergerhard.de