peioro

Forms

peiōrō (present infinitive peiōrāre, perfect active peiōrāvī, supine peiōrātum); first conjugation^[1]

Etymology

It is from Latin peior (“worse”), the comparative of malus¹, formed like meliōrō from melior (“better”).^[2]

Earliest recorded meaning

It first appears in the Sententiae of the jurist Paulus (first half of the 3rd century AD),^[2][3] who says that a free man may make his own status “both worse and better”, et peiorare … et meliorem facere.^[2][4]

Semantic evolution

It remained a rare post-Classical word.^[4] The medical writer Caelius Aurelianus uses it intransitively, chiefly in the ablative absolute: a disease or a symptom “growing worse”.^[2][4] It lives on in Romance, as Italian peggiorare, Portuguese pejorar and Occitan pejorar, and English reshaped it as pejorate.^[1]

Timeline

• first half of the 3rd century AD – Paulus uses it of making one's status worse.^[2][3]
• 5th century AD – Caelius Aurelianus uses it of diseases growing worse.^[2][3]

Meanings

Verb

1. (Late Latin) To make worse, aggravate.^[2][4][1]
2. (Late Latin, intransitive, of illness) To grow worse, deteriorate.^[2][4]

Related words

• melioro
• English pejorative

References

1. ^ a b c Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f g h Thesaurus linguae Latinae (1900–), Leipzig: Teubner; Berlin: De Gruyter; open-access ed., Munich: Bayerische Akademie der Wissenschaften
3. ^ a b c Köbler, Gerhard (2010), Lateinisches Abkunfts- und Wirkungswörterbuch für Altertum und Mittelalter, online ed., koeblergerhard.de
4. ^ a b c d e Lewis, Charlton T.; Short, Charles (1879), A Latin Dictionary, Oxford: Clarendon Press