palpito

Forms

palpitō (present infinitive palpitāre, perfect active palpitāvī, supine palpitātum); first conjugation, no passive^[1]

Etymology

It is from Latin palpō (“to touch softly, stroke”) + -itō, a frequentative verb.^[2][3][1] De Vaan finds no etymology for palpō; to explain the second vowel of this verb and of palpebra (“eyelid”), Serbat posited an older verb meaning “to move repeatedly”.^[4]

Earliest recorded meaning

Cicero has it first,^[4] in the De natura deorum, of the beating heart.^[3]

Semantic evolution

It is used of the heart and arteries beating strongly from illness or emotion,^[2] and of anything that quivers: Ovid's cut-off tongue that throbs like a snake's severed tail, the brain of an infant in Pliny the Elder, and the drop of blood that leaps in an egg.^[2][3] It often describes people and animals in their death throes, as in Ovid, Lucan, Statius and Suetonius.^[2][3] Pliny also uses it of the gills of fish and of a frog's tongue.^[2] Statius transfers it to a flickering fire, and Petronius uses it of a throbbing mind.^[2][3]

In Ecclesiastical Latin it can also mean to blink.^[5] English palpitate was taken from its past participle in the 1620s.^[6]

Timeline

• 81–43 BC – Cicero uses it of the heart.^[3][4][7]
• 43 BC–18 AD – Ovid uses it of a severed tongue.^[2][7]
• 23/24–79 AD – Pliny the Elder uses it of the gills of fish.^[2][7]
• c. 45–96 AD – Statius uses it of a flickering fire.^[2][7]
• c. 75–c. 150 AD – Suetonius uses it of people half dead.^[2][7]
• 1620s – English borrows palpitate.^[6]

Meanings

Verb

1. (of the heart or arteries) To beat, throb; to beat strongly, palpitate.^[2][3]
2. To quiver, twitch (of a dying creature or a severed part).^[2][3]
3. Of other pulsating movements of the body, such as gills.^[2]
4. (transferred) To flicker (of fire).^[2][3]
5. (Ecclesiastical Latin) To blink.^[5]

Word family

• palpitātiō
• palpitātus

Related words

• palpō
• palpebra
• English palpitate

References

1. ^ a b c d Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n Glare, P. G. W., ed. (2012), Oxford Latin Dictionary, 2nd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
3. ^ a b c d e f g h i Lewis, Charlton T.; Short, Charles (1879), A Latin Dictionary, Oxford: Clarendon Press
4. ^ a b c 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 Stelten, Leo F. (1995), Dictionary of Ecclesiastical Latin, Peabody, Mass.: Hendrickson
6. ^ a b Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
7. ^ a b c d e Köbler, Gerhard (2010), Lateinisches Abkunfts- und Wirkungswörterbuch für Altertum und Mittelalter, online ed., koeblergerhard.de