occo

Forms

occō (present infinitive occāre, perfect active occāvī, supine occātum); first conjugation^[1]

Etymology

It is from Latin occa (“harrow”),^[1] although the verb is recorded long before the noun, which appears only in Late Latin texts and glosses.^[2] The TLL therefore hesitates to derive it from that noun and assumes a lost noun related to the words for “harrow” in other languages;^[3] de Vaan answers that a first-conjugation verb still implies a noun as its base.^[2] He traces the noun to Proto-Indo-European *h₂oḱ-et- (“harrow”), perhaps through Proto-Italic *oketā-; the ⟨cc⟩ is unexplained, since Hirt's metathesis has no parallel, and the word may come from an Italic dialect in which /kt/ became /kk/.^[2] Cognate with Welsh oged (“harrow”), Ancient Greek ὀξίνα (oxína, “a toothed farm implement”), Lithuanian akė́čios (“harrow”), Old High German egida and Old English egeðe.^[2]

Earliest recorded meaning

Its first author is Plautus,^[3] who puns on it in the Captivi: nam semper occant prius quam sariunt rūsticī, “for country people always harrow before they hoe”.^[3]

Semantic evolution

It was a farming word, used in verse only by Plautus, Horace and Persius and otherwise by writers on agriculture from Cato on.^[3] It meant to harrow ground and to break up the clods round or over plants and seeds: Varro advises digging or ploughing young vineyards and then harrowing them so that no clod is left, and Pliny the Elder says that fenugreek and kidney beans are only harrowed in.^[4][3][5] Horace uses it of harrowing cornfields.^[5][6] Palladius and Isidore of Seville use it of covering seeds, trees or vines with earth.^[3]

Timeline

• c. 250–184 BC – Plautus puns on it in the Captivi.^[3][7]
• 234–149 BC – Cato uses it in his work on agriculture.^[6][7]
• 116–27 BC – Varro uses it of harrowing young vineyards.^[3][7]
• 65–8 BC – Horace uses it of cornfields.^[5][7]
• 23/24–79 AD – Pliny the Elder uses it of harrowing in seeds.^[5][7]
• c. 560–636 AD – Isidore of Seville explains it as covering seeds with earth.^[3][7]

Meanings

Verb

1. To harrow (ground).^[4][5]
2. To break up the clods round or over plants or seeds; to cover seeds with earth.^[4][3]

Word family

• deoccō
• inoccō
• occātiō
• occātor
• occillō

Usage notes

Ancient grammarians explained the word in different ways.^[3] Varro derived it from occīdere, because the clods are broken up;^[3][5] Festus reports that Verrius Flaccus derived it from occaedere, because it cuts the big clods of earth, and that Cicero derived it more elegantly from occaecāre, because it covers the sown seed.^[3][5]

References

1. ^ a b c d Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d de Vaan, Michiel (2008), Etymological Dictionary of Latin and the other Italic Languages, Leiden Indo-European Etymological Dictionary Series 7, Leiden; Boston: Brill
3. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m Thesaurus linguae Latinae (1900–), Leipzig: Teubner; Berlin: De Gruyter; open-access ed., Munich: Bayerische Akademie der Wissenschaften
4. ^ a b c Glare, P. G. W., ed. (2012), Oxford Latin Dictionary, 2nd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
5. ^ a b c d e f g Lewis, Charlton T.; Short, Charles (1879), A Latin Dictionary, Oxford: Clarendon Press
6. ^ a b Conte, Gian Biagio; Pianezzola, Emilio; Ranucci, Giuliano (2010), il Latino: Vocabolario della lingua latina, 3rd ed., Florence: Le Monnier
7. ^ a b c d e f Köbler, Gerhard (2010), Lateinisches Abkunfts- und Wirkungswörterbuch für Altertum und Mittelalter, online ed., koeblergerhard.de