occipio

Forms

occipiō (present infinitive occipere, perfect active occēpī, supine occeptum); third (-iō variant) conjugation^[1] The spelling occupiō is also found.^[2] Plautus has the old future perfect occepsō.^[2][3]

Etymology

It is from Latin ob- + capiō (“to take”), formed like incipiō (“to begin”).^[2][4][1] De Vaan traces capiō to Proto-Italic *kap-i- and either Proto-Indo-European *kh₂p-i- or a non-Indo-European ⟨*kap-i-⟩, “to seize”.^[5] Cognate with Ancient Greek κάπτω (káptō, “to gulp down”) and Gothic 𐌷𐌰𐍆𐌾𐌰𐌽 (hafjan, “to lift”).^[5] The commentator Donatus connected it with occipitium (“back of the head”), as if it meant “to set up the head of a thing”.^[4]

Earliest recorded meaning

Its first examples in the OLD are in Plautus, who says Jupiter began to love Alcmena behind her husband's back.^[2]

Semantic evolution

It means to take up or begin an activity, often with an infinitive, and, in Plautus, to begin a story.^[2] Intransitively it is to begin or start, of conditions, as Terence's “a brawl had already started between them”, and of periods of time in the historian Calpurnius Piso.^[2] Lewis & Short note that neither Cicero nor Caesar uses it,^[3] and Donatus judged occēpī a better word than incēpī.^[4] Wiktionary glosses it “to begin, start, commence”.^[1]

Timeline

• c. 250–184 BC – Plautus of beginning to love and to tell.^[2][6]
• 190–159 BC – Terence of a brawl starting.^[2][6]

Meanings

Verb

1. To take up, begin an activity; to begin to do something.^[2][3][1]
2. Of conditions and times, to begin, commence.^[2][3]

Word family

• occeptō

Related words

• incipiō
• capiō

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 Glare, P. G. W., ed. (2012), Oxford Latin Dictionary, 2nd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
3. ^ a b c d Lewis, Charlton T.; Short, Charles (1879), A Latin Dictionary, Oxford: Clarendon Press
4. ^ a b c Thesaurus linguae Latinae (1900–), Leipzig: Teubner; Berlin: De Gruyter; open-access ed., Munich: Bayerische Akademie der Wissenschaften
5. ^ 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
6. ^ a b Köbler, Gerhard (2010), Lateinisches Abkunfts- und Wirkungswörterbuch für Altertum und Mittelalter, online ed., koeblergerhard.de