obsidatus

Forms

obsidātus m (genitive obsidātūs); fourth declension^[1][2]

Etymology

It is from Latin obses (“hostage”) + -ātus, formed like praesidātus.^[3][1]

Earliest recorded meaning

It first appears in Ammianus Marcellinus, of a father long held “by the pledge of hostageship” (diu obsidatus pignore tentus).^[1][3][4]

Semantic evolution

Lewis & Short class it as post-classical.^[1] Besides Ammianus it occurs in the scholia on Juvenal, of someone “given in hostageship”.^[1][2] In Medieval Latin it kept the sense of the position of a hostage and could also mean the hostages themselves.^[5] The manuscripts also have the spelling obsedatus.^[3]

Timeline

• c. 390 AD – Ammianus Marcellinus uses it of the condition of a hostage.^[1][3][4]

Meanings

Noun

1. The condition of a hostage, hostageship.^[1][2][5]
2. (Medieval Latin) The hostages.^[5]

References

1. ^ a b c d e f g Lewis, Charlton T.; Short, Charles (1879), A Latin Dictionary, Oxford: Clarendon Press
2. ^ a b c Georges, Karl Ernst (1913–1918), Ausführliches lateinisch-deutsches Handwörterbuch, 8th ed., ed. Heinrich Georges, Hannover; Leipzig: Hahn
3. ^ a b c d Thesaurus linguae Latinae (1900–), Leipzig: Teubner; Berlin: De Gruyter; open-access ed., Munich: Bayerische Akademie der Wissenschaften
4. ^ a b Köbler, Gerhard (2010), Lateinisches Abkunfts- und Wirkungswörterbuch für Altertum und Mittelalter, online ed., koeblergerhard.de
5. ^ a b c Niermeyer, J. F. (1976), Mediae Latinitatis Lexicon Minus, Leiden: Brill