Etymologically
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percoquo

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Forms

percoquō (present infinitive percoquere, perfect active percoxī, supine percoctum); third conjugation[1]

Etymology

It is from Latin per- (“thoroughly”) + coquō (“to cook”).[1][2] De Vaan traces coquō to Proto-Italic *kʷekʷe/o- (“to cook”) and Proto-Indo-European *pekʷ-e/o- (“to cook”).[3]

Earliest recorded meaning

Plautus has it first: in the Mercator someone wants to grab a cook to cook the lunch properly, and the Rudens has a proverbial phrase about cooking a catch on one's fingers.[1][4]

Semantic evolution

The TLL records it once or twice each in Plautus, Cicero, Laberius, Ovid and Vitruvius, three or four times in Cato, Lucretius and Seneca, and more often in Columella and Pliny the Elder, who has beef and badly cooked lentils.[2][4] Cato uses it of grapes that must be fully ripe when picked, and Ovid and Seneca of the sun ripening fruit.[1][4] Cicero's Oeconomicus has earth baked by the sun, and Lucretius the races of men blackened by heat.[1][4] Lucretius spells it ⟨perquoqu-⟩.[2]

Timeline

  • c. 250–184 BC – Plautus, of cooking thoroughly.[1][4][5]
  • 234–149 BC – Cato, of ripened grapes.[1][5]
  • 96–55 BC – Lucretius, of skin blackened by the sun.[4][5]
  • 23/24–79 AD – Pliny the Elder, of cooking meat and lentils.[4][5]

Meanings

Verb

  1. To cook thoroughly, boil soft; to cook carefully; to bake (pottery) thoroughly.[1][4]
  2. Of the sun, to scorch, bake, heat; to blacken.[1][4]
  3. To ripen fully.[1][4]

References

  1. ^ 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
  2. ^ a b c Thesaurus linguae Latinae (1900–), Leipzig: Teubner; Berlin: De Gruyter; open-access ed., Munich: Bayerische Akademie der Wissenschaften
  3. ^ de Vaan, Michiel (2008), Etymological Dictionary of Latin and the other Italic Languages, Leiden Indo-European Etymological Dictionary Series 7, Leiden; Boston: Brill
  4. ^ a b c d e f g h i j Lewis, Charlton T.; Short, Charles (1879), A Latin Dictionary, Oxford: Clarendon Press
  5. ^ a b c d Köbler, Gerhard (2010), Lateinisches Abkunfts- und Wirkungswörterbuch für Altertum und Mittelalter, online ed., koeblergerhard.de