obduro

Forms

obdūrō (present infinitive obdūrāre, perfect active obdūrāvī, supine obdūrātum); first conjugation^[1]

Etymology

It is from Latin ob- + dūrō (“to harden; to endure”).^[2][1][3] The simple verb is formed from dūrus (“hard”), which de Vaan derives from Proto-Italic *dūro- and Proto-Indo-European *du(e)h2-ro- (“far, long”); he notes that the verb's sense must have moved from “be hard” to “endure, last”.^[4]

Earliest recorded meaning

The TLL finds it from Plautus (c. 250–184 BC) on,^[3][5] where a speaker says he will deny everything and hold out (pernegabo atque obdurabo).^[2][6]

Semantic evolution

In Classical Latin it is mostly intransitive, to hold out, persist, endure: Catullus tells himself to bear it with a stubborn mind and hold firm (obstinata mente perfer, obdura), and Horace and Ovid use the same imperative.^[2][6] Cicero has the impersonal passive for enduring three days, and Ulpian uses it of slaves who hold out under interrogation.^[2] As a transitive verb it means to make hard: Seneca has a river whose mud sticks bodies together and hardens them, and Cicero uses it figuratively of hardening oneself against nature.^[2] L&S find the transitive sense mainly in later writers: Lactantius has hardening oneself against plain truth, and the Vulgate hardening the heart against God, with the passive in the Epistle to the Hebrews.^[7][8] In Ecclesiastical Latin it means to harden or make insensible.^[9] The TLL derives Italian addurare, Old French adurer and Old Provençal adurar from it, with the prefix changed from ob- to ab-.^[3]

Timeline

• c. 250–184 BC – Plautus uses it of holding out in denial.^[2][5]
• 81/79–52/50 BC – Catullus uses the imperative obdura.^[2][5]
• 81–43 BC – Cicero uses the impersonal passive and the transitive sense.^[2][5]
• c. 250–317 AD – Lactantius uses it of hardening oneself against the truth.^[7][5]
• 390–406 AD – The Vulgate uses it of hardening the heart.^[7][5]

Meanings

Verb

1. (intransitive) To hold out, persist, endure, be obdurate.^[2][7]
2. (transitive) To make hard, harden;^[2][8] (figurative) to make insensible.^[2][8]
3. (Ecclesiastical Latin) To harden (the heart) against God.^[7][9]

Word family

• obdūrātiō

Related words

• dūrus
• obdūrēscō
• English obdure

References

1. ^ a b c d 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. ^ a b c 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 f Köbler, Gerhard (2010), Lateinisches Abkunfts- und Wirkungswörterbuch für Altertum und Mittelalter, online ed., koeblergerhard.de
6. ^ a b Conte, Gian Biagio; Pianezzola, Emilio; Ranucci, Giuliano (2010), il Latino: Vocabolario della lingua latina, 3rd ed., Florence: Le Monnier
7. ^ a b c d e Lewis, Charlton T.; Short, Charles (1879), A Latin Dictionary, Oxford: Clarendon Press
8. ^ a b c Georges, Karl Ernst (1913–1918), Ausführliches lateinisch-deutsches Handwörterbuch, 8th ed., ed. Heinrich Georges, Hannover; Leipzig: Hahn
9. ^ a b Stelten, Leo F. (1995), Dictionary of Ecclesiastical Latin, Peabody, Mass.: Hendrickson