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passivus

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passivus1 spread about, indiscriminate

Pronunciation

  • Classical: [pasˈsiː.wʊs][1]
  • Ecclesiastical: [pasˈsiː.vus][1]

Forms

passīvus (feminine passīva, neuter passīvum, adverb passīvē); first/second-declension adjective[1]

Etymology

The adjective meaning “spread about” is from Latin pandō (“to spread out”), formed with -īvus on its participle passus (“spread out”).[2][3][4] The TLL compares passim “here and there”.[3]

Earliest recorded meaning

The TLL finds it from inscriptions of the 2nd century AD on, and then in Apuleius and Tertullian, who uses it ten times;[3] it describes what is found or happens everywhere.[3]

Semantic evolution

From “spread about, found everywhere” it came to mean “common, general”, as when Tertullian calls the name of god common to many,[5][6] and “promiscuous, jumbled”, as in Apuleius' heap of mixed seeds, seminum passiva congeries.[5][4] The OLD defines it as random, indiscriminate.[2] Niermeyer gives the medieval senses “common, ordinary” and “wandering”.[7] Used as a noun, passivi were vagrants or common people: Augustine mentions Roman vagrants called passivi.[5][4]

Timeline

  • 2nd century AD – It appears in inscriptions.[3]
  • c. 125–175 AD – Apuleius writes of a jumbled heap of seeds.[5][8]
  • c. 160–220 AD – Tertullian uses it for a name shared by many.[5][8]
  • 354–430 AD – Augustine uses passivi of vagrants.[5][8]

Meanings

Adjective

  1. Spread about, found everywhere; common, general.[5][4][6]
  2. Random, indiscriminate; jumbled, promiscuous.[2][5]
  3. (as a noun, plural) Vagrants; the common people.[5][4][6]

passivus2 passive

Pronunciation

  • Classical: [pasˈsiː.wʊs][1]
  • Ecclesiastical: [pasˈsiː.vus][1]

Forms

passīvus (feminine passīva, neuter passīvum, adverb passīvē); first/second-declension adjective[1]

Etymology

The adjective meaning “passive” is from Latin patior (“to suffer, undergo”), formed with -īvus on its participle stem ⟨pass-⟩.[2][1][9] In its grammatical sense it renders Ancient Greek παθητικός (pathētikós), of which Wiktionary calls it a calque.[1][3]

Earliest recorded meaning

The TLL finds it from Festus and Pliny the Elder on;[3] the OLD's earliest example is a grammatical definition of Pliny's, quoted by a later grammarian: passivum est quod alio faciente nos patimur, “passive is what we undergo when another acts”.[2]

Semantic evolution

Its commonest use was the grammatical one, for passive forms of verbs and participles, very frequent in the grammarians.[3][4] In philosophy it meant capable of feeling or suffering: Apuleius calls the daemons animo passiva, subject in mind to the same emotions as people,[2] and Arnobius speaks of a soul that can suffer and perish.[5]

Medieval Latin kept the sense “liable to suffering, vulnerable”,[7][10] and Thomas Aquinas uses it for what is acted upon, as the opposite of activus.[11] English passive came in the late 14th century from Old French passif and directly from Latin, in the senses “capable of being acted upon” and in grammar.[9]

Timeline

  • 23/24–79 AD – Pliny the Elder defines the passive in grammar.[2][8]
  • 2nd half of the 2nd century AD – Festus uses it of passive verb forms.[3][8]
  • c. 125–175 AD – Apuleius calls the daemons passive in mind, subject to emotion.[2][8]
  • 297–310 AD – Arnobius writes of a soul capable of suffering.[5][8]
  • late 14th century – English passive is recorded, from French and Latin.[9]

Meanings

Adjective

  1. Subject to passion or emotion; capable of feeling or suffering.[2][5]
  2. (grammar) Passive.[2][5][1]

Word family

  • passīvē
  • passīvitās

Usage notes

Lewis and Short cite the adverb passīvē for both words: “here and there” in Apuleius, and “passively” in a line of Lucilius quoted by Priscian.[5]

References

  1. ^ a b c d e f g h i 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 e f g h i Thesaurus linguae Latinae (1900–), Leipzig: Teubner; Berlin: De Gruyter; open-access ed., Munich: Bayerische Akademie der Wissenschaften
  4. ^ a b c d e f Georges, Karl Ernst (1913–1918), Ausführliches lateinisch-deutsches Handwörterbuch, 8th ed., ed. Heinrich Georges, Hannover; Leipzig: Hahn
  5. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n Lewis, Charlton T.; Short, Charles (1879), A Latin Dictionary, Oxford: Clarendon Press
  6. ^ a b c Gaffiot, Félix (2016), Dictionnaire latin-français, new ed. by Gérard Gréco et al. (Gaffiot 2016), online ed.
  7. ^ a b Niermeyer, J. F. (1976), Mediae Latinitatis Lexicon Minus, Leiden: Brill
  8. ^ a b c d e f g Köbler, Gerhard (2010), Lateinisches Abkunfts- und Wirkungswörterbuch für Altertum und Mittelalter, online ed., koeblergerhard.de
  9. ^ a b c Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
  10. ^ Stelten, Leo F. (1995), Dictionary of Ecclesiastical Latin, Peabody, Mass.: Hendrickson
  11. ^ Schütz, Ludwig (1895), Thomas-Lexikon, 2nd ed., Paderborn: F. Schöningh