perfodio

Forms

perfodiō (present infinitive perfodere, perfect active perfōdī, supine perfossum); third (-iō variant) conjugation^[1] Plautus has the perfect perfodīvī.^[2][3] Later texts have fourth-conjugation forms, such as the Itala's infinitive perfodīrī.^[3][4]

Etymology

It is from Latin per- + fodiō (“to dig”).^[5][1][3] De Vaan traces fodiō to Proto-Italic *foþ-i- and Proto-Indo-European *bʰodʰ-i- (“to poke, dig”);^[6] cognate with Hittite padda- (“to dig”) and Lithuanian bèsti (“to stick, dig”).^[6]

Earliest recorded meaning

Plautus has it first, in the Miles gloriosus: “in that room I dug through the wall”.^[5]

Semantic evolution

It is to make a hole through a wall: Cicero taunts a man with having dug through walls in his youth.^[5][2] It is to dig a channel through: Cicero has Athos dug through, Livy a mountain dug through to make a road to the citadel and a strait cut by hand, and Pliny the Elder the Pillars of Hercules dug through to let in the sea.^[5][2] Of weapons it is to pierce or stab: Virgil has a cuirass pierced in twelve places, and Tacitus a pierced throat.^[5][2] It is also to dig into: Columella breaks hard ground with heavy rakes, and Petronius has teeth picked with a silver quill.^[5][2] Pliny the Elder has a fish that bores holes in ships and sinks them.^[4] In the Vulgate it is to break into a house, of a thief.^[2] Church Latin has “dig through, break open”.^[7]

Timeline

• c. 250–184 BC – Plautus, of digging through a wall.^[5][8]
• 81–43 BC – Cicero, of housebreaking and of Athos dug through.^[5][2][8]
• 70–19 BC – Virgil, of a pierced cuirass.^[5][8]
• 390–406 AD – The Vulgate, of breaking into a house.^[2][8]

Meanings

Verb

1. To make a hole through (a wall); to break into (a house).^[5][2][1]
2. To dig a channel through; to make (a passage) by digging.^[5][2]
3. To pierce, stab, perforate.^[5][2][1]
4. To dig into; to pick (the teeth).^[5][2]

Word family

• imperfossus
• perfossio
• perfossor
• perfossō
• perfossūra
• perfossus

Related words

• affodiō
• circumfodiō
• confodiō
• dēfodiō
• effodiō
• fodiō
• infodiō
• interfodiō
• praefodiō
• suffodiō

References

1. ^ a b c d e f Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l Lewis, Charlton T.; Short, Charles (1879), A Latin Dictionary, Oxford: Clarendon Press
3. ^ a b c Thesaurus linguae Latinae (1900–), Leipzig: Teubner; Berlin: De Gruyter; open-access ed., Munich: Bayerische Akademie der Wissenschaften
4. ^ a b 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 Glare, P. G. W., ed. (2012), Oxford Latin Dictionary, 2nd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
6. ^ a b de Vaan, Michiel (2008), Etymological Dictionary of Latin and the other Italic Languages, Leiden Indo-European Etymological Dictionary Series 7, Leiden; Boston: Brill
7. ^ Stelten, Leo F. (1995), Dictionary of Ecclesiastical Latin, Peabody, Mass.: Hendrickson
8. ^ a b c d Köbler, Gerhard (2010), Lateinisches Abkunfts- und Wirkungswörterbuch für Altertum und Mittelalter, online ed., koeblergerhard.de