oberro

Forms

oberrō (present infinitive oberrāre, perfect active oberrāvī, supine oberrātum); first conjugation^[1]

Etymology

It is from Latin ob- + errō (“to wander”).^[2][1][3]

Earliest recorded meaning

Horace says a lyre-player who always goes wrong on the same string is laughed at.^[2]

Semantic evolution

It is to wander about a place, rove or ramble, often aimlessly: Tacitus has men wander round the tents, Curtius in unknown places, and Pliny the Elder the weasel that roams our houses.^[2][4] Lewis & Short call it poetic and post-Augustan prose.^[4] The elder Seneca speaks of half-dead herds wandering, and Seneca of air still hovering underground.^[2] It is also to get in someone's way, as in Seneca's Phaedra.^[2] With oculīs or mentī it is to hover before the eyes or mind: Curtius has the image of a great danger before someone's eyes.^[2] Pliny the Younger and later authors have shortened perfect forms such as oberrāsse.^[3] Church Latin glosses it wander about.^[5]

Timeline

• 65–8 BC – Horace of a lyre-player going wrong.^[2]
• 4 BC–65 AD – Seneca of hovering air.^[2]
• 23/24–79 AD – Pliny the Elder of the weasel in houses.^[4]
• 98–115 AD – Tacitus of wandering round tents.^[4]

Meanings

Verb

1. To wander about, rove, ramble; to hover.^[2][4][1][5]
2. To get in the way.^[2]
3. To hover before the eyes or mind.^[2]
4. To go wrong, err.^[2][1]

Related words

• errō

References

1. ^ a b c d e f Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l Glare, P. G. W., ed. (2012), Oxford Latin Dictionary, 2nd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
3. ^ a b Thesaurus linguae Latinae (1900–), Leipzig: Teubner; Berlin: De Gruyter; open-access ed., Munich: Bayerische Akademie der Wissenschaften
4. ^ a b c d e Lewis, Charlton T.; Short, Charles (1879), A Latin Dictionary, Oxford: Clarendon Press
5. ^ a b Stelten, Leo F. (1995), Dictionary of Ecclesiastical Latin, Peabody, Mass.: Hendrickson