obsessor

Forms

obsessor m (genitive obsessōris); third declension^[1]

Etymology

It is from Latin obsideō (“to sit at; to besiege”) + -tor,^[2][3] also spelled ⟨ops-⟩.^[2] The verb is a compound of ob- and sedeō (“to sit”),^[4] which goes back to Proto-Italic *sed-ē- and Proto-Indo-European *sed-eh₁- (“to be seated”).^[4]

Earliest recorded meaning

It is first found in Plautus' Pseudolus, with a genitive: fui hodie solus obsessor fori, “I alone have haunted the forum today”.^[2][5][3]

Semantic evolution

The early sense is one who occupies or haunts a place: Ovid calls a water snake obsessor of living waters.^[2][5] Lewis and Short find it only in early Latin and poetry.^[5] In military use it means a besieger: Cicero has obsessor curiae, Livy the besieger of Luceria, and Tacitus writes that a fire brought more fear to the besieged than to the besiegers.^[5][2]

Timeline

• c. 250–184 BC – Plautus uses it of someone haunting the forum.^[2][5][6]
• 81–43 BC – Cicero uses it of besieging the senate house.^[5][6]
• 43 BC–18 AD – Ovid uses it of a snake haunting a spring.^[2][5][6]
• 98–115 AD – Tacitus uses it of besiegers.^[2][5][6]

Meanings

Noun

1. One who occupies or haunts (a place), a frequenter.^[2][5]
2. A besieger, blockader.^[2][5]

References

1. ^ Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f g h i j 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 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 g h i j Lewis, Charlton T.; Short, Charles (1879), A Latin Dictionary, Oxford: Clarendon Press
6. ^ a b c d Köbler, Gerhard (2010), Lateinisches Abkunfts- und Wirkungswörterbuch für Altertum und Mittelalter, online ed., koeblergerhard.de