patro

Forms

patrō (present infinitive patrāre, perfect active patrāvī, supine patrātum); first conjugation^[1]

Etymology

The origin is uncertain.^[2][3] It is perhaps from Latin pater (“father”), as the Romans, among them Priscian, and the OLD and some modern scholars hold, with the verbal suffix -ō, perhaps through pater patrātus, the title of the priest who swore treaties; pater goes back to Proto-Indo-European *ph₂tḗr (“father”).^[2][4][1] Lewis & Short suggested instead the root of pateō (“to be open”).^[3]

Earliest recorded meaning

The TLL dates it from Plautus, and records it in Cato, the triumphal inscription of Aemilius, Cicero, Lucretius, Sallust and Livy; it is commoner in the historians.^[2] Cato uses it of finishing the sowing.^[3]

Semantic evolution

It means to carry through, bring to completion or accomplish: Sallust uses it of bringing a war to an end and of committing a crime, Livy of concluding a peace and of the oath sworn by the pater patratus at a treaty, and Tacitus of executing orders and of a victory won.^[4][3] Lewis & Short note that Cicero rarely uses it and Caesar not at all.^[3] Manuscripts often confuse it with parō.^[2]

It also had an obscene sense, to reach a sexual climax, to which Quintilian alludes;^[4][3] Persius speaks of someone “melting with a lustful eye”.^[4][3] Glossaries explain it with generō (“to beget”) and perficiō (“to complete”).^[2] Church Latin glosses it to perform, achieve, accomplish, effect.^[5]

Timeline

• c. 250–184 BC – Plautus uses it.^[2][6]
• 234–149 BC – Cato of finishing the sowing.^[3][6]
• 86–34 BC – Sallust of ending a war and committing a crime.^[3][6]
• 59 BC–17 AD – Livy of concluding a peace and swearing a treaty oath.^[3][6]
• 34–62 AD – Persius in the sexual sense.^[4][6]

Meanings

Verb

1. To carry through, bring to completion, accomplish, execute; to conclude a war or a peace; to commit a crime.^[4][3][5][1]
2. iūsiūrandum patrāre: to pronounce the oath at the making of a treaty.^[3]
3. To reach a sexual climax, ejaculate.^[4][1]

Word family

• expatrō
• impetriō
• impetrō
• patrātiō
• patrātor
• perpetrō
• prōpetrō

Related words

• pater

References

1. ^ a b c d e f Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f Thesaurus linguae Latinae (1900–), Leipzig: Teubner; Berlin: De Gruyter; open-access ed., Munich: Bayerische Akademie der Wissenschaften
3. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l Lewis, Charlton T.; Short, Charles (1879), A Latin Dictionary, Oxford: Clarendon Press
4. ^ a b c d e f g Glare, P. G. W., ed. (2012), Oxford Latin Dictionary, 2nd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
5. ^ a b Stelten, Leo F. (1995), Dictionary of Ecclesiastical Latin, Peabody, Mass.: Hendrickson
6. ^ a b c d e Köbler, Gerhard (2010), Lateinisches Abkunfts- und Wirkungswörterbuch für Altertum und Mittelalter, online ed., koeblergerhard.de