Etymologically
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occipio

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Pronunciation

  • Classical: [ɔkˈkɪ.pi.oː][1]
  • Ecclesiastical: [otˈt͡ʃiː.pi.o][1]

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

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