obedo

Forms

obedō (present infinitive obedere or obēsse, perfect active obēdī, supine obēsum or obēssum or obēstum); third conjugation, irregular alternative forms^[1]

Etymology

It is from Latin ob- + edō¹ (“to eat”), “to eat away”.^[2][1] The verb edō¹ itself goes back to Proto-Indo-European *h₁ed- (“to eat”).^[1]

Earliest recorded meaning

The verb is found almost only in its perfect participle obēsus.^[3] The earliest instance is in Laevius, who, as Gellius reports, spoke of a body “wasted away” (corpore pectoreque undique obeso).^[3][2]

Semantic evolution

The sense “eaten away, hollowed out” appears in the poem Aetna, where the earth is said not to be obesa, which Lewis & Short, Georges and Gaffiot read as a form of this verb.^[3][4][5] Otherwise the participle took the opposite meaning, “fattened, fat”, and became the adjective obēsus.^[2][3]

Timeline

• 2nd/1st century BC – Laevius uses the participle of a body “wasted away”.^[3][6]
• 37–68 AD – The poem Aetna uses obesa of the earth, read as “eaten away”.^[3][5][6]
• c. 165 AD – Gellius quotes and discusses Laevius' use of the word.^[3][2][6]

Meanings

Verb

1. To eat away, gnaw, hollow out.^[3][4][5]
2. To waste away, become lean.^[1]

Word family

• obēsus

Usage notes

The OLD gives the verb no entry of its own and marks *obedo as a form inferred from obēsus.^[2]

References

1. ^ a b c d e f Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e Glare, P. G. W., ed. (2012), Oxford Latin Dictionary, 2nd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
3. ^ a b c d e f g h Lewis, Charlton T.; Short, Charles (1879), A Latin Dictionary, Oxford: Clarendon Press
4. ^ a b Georges, Karl Ernst (1913–1918), Ausführliches lateinisch-deutsches Handwörterbuch, 8th ed., ed. Heinrich Georges, Hannover; Leipzig: Hahn
5. ^ a b c Gaffiot, Félix (2016), Dictionnaire latin-français, new ed. by Gérard Gréco et al. (Gaffiot 2016), online ed.
6. ^ a b c Köbler, Gerhard (2010), Lateinisches Abkunfts- und Wirkungswörterbuch für Altertum und Mittelalter, online ed., koeblergerhard.de