pervado

Forms

pervādō (present infinitive pervādere, perfect active pervāsī, supine pervāsum); third conjugation^[1]

Etymology

It is from Latin per- + vādō (“to go”).^[2][1][3] De Vaan traces vādō to Proto-Italic *wāþe/o- and Proto-Indo-European *weh₂dʰ- (“to advance”), with cognates such as Old High German watan (“to wade”) and Old Norse vaða (“to wade”).^[4]

Earliest recorded meaning

Lewis & Short's first example is a line of Accius quoted by Varro, in which someone is told to pass through the sky.^[5][6] The TLL notes that it is rare in verse (Accius, Lucretius, Silius) and common in prose.^[3]

Semantic evolution

Of people it is to make one's way through or across: Cicero tells Verres that he swept through every part of the province like a disastrous storm.^[2] Seneca uses it of getting through a term of office, as Quintius hurried through his dictatorship.^[2] Of conditions it is to spread over an area or through minds, as a belief among barbarian peoples in Cicero, and of persons or things to make one's way to a place or reach it.^[2] Lewis & Short give penetrō as a synonym.^[5] In Late Latin it came to mean to seize or occupy unjustly.^[1] Church Latin glosses it to come or go through.^[7] English pervade comes from it, from the 1650s.^[8]

Timeline

• 170–c. 90 BC – Accius of passing through the sky.^[5][6]
• 81–43 BC – Cicero of sweeping through a province and of a belief spreading.^[2][6]
• 4 BC–65 AD – Seneca of getting through a dictatorship.^[2][6]
• 1650s – English pervade is formed from it.^[8]

Meanings

Verb

1. To go or pass through, make one's way across, traverse; to get through a term of office or a difficulty.^[2][5][1][7]
2. To spread through, be diffused over, pervade.^[2][5][1]
3. To make one's way to, penetrate, reach a place.^[2][1]
4. (Late Latin) To invade; to usurp, occupy unjustly.^[1]

Word family

• pervāsiō
• pervāsor

Related words

• vādō
• invādō
• ēvādō

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