offundo

Forms

offundō (present infinitive offundere, perfect active offūdī, supine offūsum); third conjugation^[1]

Etymology

It is from Latin ob- + fundō (“to pour”).^[2][3][1] De Vaan traces fundō to Proto-Italic *χund- and Proto-Indo-European *ǵʰu-n-d- (“to pour”), with cognates such as Sanskrit जुहोति (juhóti, “pours, sacrifices”) and Ancient Greek χέω (khéō, “to pour”).^[4]

Earliest recorded meaning

Plautus uses it first, in the Asinaria, of a fowler who has prepared his ground and scatters food for the birds.^[2][5]

Semantic evolution

The TLL finds it in verse only in Plautus, Phaedrus, Valerius Flaccus and Statius, and in prose from Cicero and Livy on.^[3] It means to pour or spread something over a surface,^[2] especially of darkness and similar things: Cicero speaks of an endless night spread over the state, and of the air that surrounds us as water does fish.^[2][5] Figuratively it is to spread a feeling: Livy has sudden panic spread among disordered troops.^[2] With an ablative it means to overspread or cover, as the light of a lamp dimmed by the sun in Cicero,^[2] and to fill someone with a feeling or thought: Cicero says that Marcellus fills his heart with the memory of all the Marcelli.^[2] Manuscripts sometimes spell it obf-.^[3] Stelten gives "pour out" for Church Latin.^[6]

Timeline

• c. 250–184 BC – Plautus of scattering food for birds.^[2]
• 81–43 BC – Cicero of endless night spread over the state.^[2]
• 59 BC–17 AD – Livy of panic spread among troops.^[2]

Meanings

Verb

1. To pour or spread over;^[2][5][1] (of darkness) to spread over;^[2][5][1] (figurative) to spread (a feeling).^[2][5][1]
2. To overspread, cover;^[2] (figurative) to fill, overwhelm (with a feeling).^[2]

Related words

• fundō
• effundō
• īnfundō
• superfundō

References

1. ^ a b c d e f g Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o Glare, P. G. W., ed. (2012), Oxford Latin Dictionary, 2nd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
3. ^ a b c Thesaurus linguae Latinae (1900–), Leipzig: Teubner; Berlin: De Gruyter; open-access ed., Munich: Bayerische Akademie der Wissenschaften
4. ^ de Vaan, Michiel (2008), Etymological Dictionary of Latin and the other Italic Languages, Leiden Indo-European Etymological Dictionary Series 7, Leiden; Boston: Brill
5. ^ a b c d e Lewis, Charlton T.; Short, Charles (1879), A Latin Dictionary, Oxford: Clarendon Press
6. ^ Stelten, Leo F. (1995), Dictionary of Ecclesiastical Latin, Peabody, Mass.: Hendrickson