obstaculum

Forms

obstāculum n (genitive obstāculī); second declension^[1]

Etymology

It is formed from Latin obstō (“to stand in the way”) + -culum.^[2][1][3]

Earliest recorded meaning

The OLD and Lewis and Short cite it first from Seneca's Natural Questions, where lightning spares thin, loose things because it minus obstaculum invenit, “meets less resistance”.^[2][4][5] The TLL regards that reading as false and records the word only from Apuleius on, who uses it in an astronomical passage of the Florida of the obscuring of the moon.^[3]

Semantic evolution

Lewis and Short call it post-Classical.^[4] It names anything that stands in the way, an obstruction or hindrance: Prudentius speaks of breaking through obstacles,^[4][6] and Ammianus uses the plural of mountains.^[4] The glossaries equate it with impedimentum and with Greek words for opposition.^[3] Ecclesiastical Latin kept the sense of hindrance,^[7] and English took obstacle from it, partly through Old French, in the mid-14th century.^[8]

Timeline

• 4 BC–65 AD – Seneca writes of lightning meeting less resistance (a reading the TLL rejects).^[2][4][3][5]
• c. 125–175 AD – Apuleius uses it of the obscuring of the moon.^[3][5]
• 348/49–c. 413 AD – Prudentius writes of breaking through obstacles.^[4][5]
• c. 390 AD – Ammianus uses the plural of mountains.^[4][5]
• mid-14th century – English borrows it as obstacle.^[8]

Meanings

Noun

1. Something that stands in the way, an obstruction, obstacle.^[2][4][3][7]
2. (astronomy) The obscuring of a heavenly body.^[3]
3. (plural) Natural barriers such as mountains.^[4]

Related words

• English obstacle

References

1. ^ a b c d Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d Glare, P. G. W., ed. (2012), Oxford Latin Dictionary, 2nd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
3. ^ a b c d e f g Thesaurus linguae Latinae (1900–), Leipzig: Teubner; Berlin: De Gruyter; open-access ed., Munich: Bayerische Akademie der Wissenschaften
4. ^ a b c d e f g h i Lewis, Charlton T.; Short, Charles (1879), A Latin Dictionary, Oxford: Clarendon Press
5. ^ a b c d e Köbler, Gerhard (2010), Lateinisches Abkunfts- und Wirkungswörterbuch für Altertum und Mittelalter, online ed., koeblergerhard.de
6. ^ Conte, Gian Biagio; Pianezzola, Emilio; Ranucci, Giuliano (2010), il Latino: Vocabolario della lingua latina, 3rd ed., Florence: Le Monnier
7. ^ a b Stelten, Leo F. (1995), Dictionary of Ecclesiastical Latin, Peabody, Mass.: Hendrickson
8. ^ a b Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com