omissio

Forms

ōmissiō f (genitive ōmissiōnis); third declension^[1]

Etymology

It is formed from Latin ōmissus + -tiō,^[1] the first part being the perfect passive participle of omittō (“to let go, leave out”).^[1][2][3]

Earliest recorded meaning

Köbler's earliest source is Aurelius Victor (c. 360 AD),^[4] who has it in the phrase omissio praedarum, the withholding of plunder.^[5][6]

Semantic evolution

Lewis and Short call the word post-classical.^[3] In Symmachus it is the leaving out of something, as of someone's praise, and in another of his letters the giving up of an accusation.^[2][3] Rhetoricians used it for the figure in which a speaker says that he will not mention something and mentions it all the same: a treatise on figures transmitted under the name of Julius Rufinianus gives omissio as the Latin for this figure, and Tiberius Claudius Donatus speaks of a transition made “by omission”.^[2][5][6]

In Christian Latin it became above all the failure to do what one ought.^[7][1] Thomas of Chobham names two evils, doing wrong and omitting good, and medieval British writers also used it in law for the abandonment of a claim.^[8] English took omission in the 14th century from Anglo-French and directly from Late Latin.^[9]

Timeline

• c. 360 AD – Aurelius Victor writes of the withholding of plunder.^[5][4]
• c. 340–402 AD – Symmachus uses it of leaving out someone's praise and of giving up an accusation.^[2][3][4]
• 1331 – An English legal record speaks of the waiver of a claim.^[8]
• mid-14th century – English borrows it as omissioun.^[9]
• 1552 – A Scottish church council requires a book to be read from its preface without the omission of any passages.^[8]

Meanings

Noun

1. A leaving out, omission; neglect.^{[3][2][10][6]}
2. A withholding, as of plunder.^[5][6]
3. (rhetoric) A figure in which one claims to pass over what one in fact says, antiphrasis or paralipsis.^[2][5][6]
4. A giving up, discontinuing, as of an accusation.^[2]
5. (Ecclesiastical Latin) Failure to do what one ought; a sin of omission.^[7][8]
6. (Medieval Latin, law) Abandonment, waiver of a claim.^[8]

References

1. ^ a b c d e f Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f g Thesaurus linguae Latinae (1900–), Leipzig: Teubner; Berlin: De Gruyter; open-access ed., Munich: Bayerische Akademie der Wissenschaften
3. ^ a b c d e Lewis, Charlton T.; Short, Charles (1879), A Latin Dictionary, Oxford: Clarendon Press
4. ^ a b c Köbler, Gerhard (2010), Lateinisches Abkunfts- und Wirkungswörterbuch für Altertum und Mittelalter, online ed., koeblergerhard.de
5. ^ a b c d e Georges, Karl Ernst (1913–1918), Ausführliches lateinisch-deutsches Handwörterbuch, 8th ed., ed. Heinrich Georges, Hannover; Leipzig: Hahn
6. ^ a b c d e 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 c d e Latham, R. E., D. R. Howlett, R. K. Ashdowne, et al. (1975–2013), Dictionary of Medieval Latin from British Sources, London: British Academy / Oxford University Press
9. ^ a b Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
10. ^ Gaffiot, Félix (2016), Dictionnaire latin-français, new ed. by Gérard Gréco et al. (Gaffiot 2016), online ed.