positura

Forms

positūra f (genitive positūrae); first declension^[1]

Etymology

It is from Latin pōnō (“to put, place”) + -ūra, built on the participle ⟨positus⟩.^[1][2] De Vaan derives pōnō from ⟨*po-sinō⟩ "to put down", from sinō (“to let”).^[3]

Earliest recorded meaning

Lucretius uses it first,^[2][4] of the order and position of the atoms that make up fire;^[1][5] Bailey thought he made it up for the metre instead of positiō.^[4]

Semantic evolution

It is a position or situation: Lucretius' atoms, Gellius' position of wood.^[1][5] Propertius uses it of the god's arrangement of the world,^[5] and it means arrangement or disposition, as when Gellius says a constellation was named ἅμαξα from its shape and the arrangement of its stars, like a wagon.^[1] He also speaks of the order of words.^[5] The TLL finds it in Lucretius, Propertius and Manilius and then from Gellius on, mostly in the grammarians,^[4] for whom it is punctuation, as in Donatus,^[5] and Niermeyer has it as a punctuation mark denoting a stop.^[6]

Timeline

• 96–55 BC – Lucretius of the position of atoms.^[1][2]
• 57/46–12 BC – Propertius of the arrangement of the world.^[5]
• c. 165 AD – Gellius of the arrangement of stars and of words.^[1][5]

Meanings

Noun

1. Position, situation, posture.^[1][5][2]
2. Arrangement, disposition, order.^[1][5]
3. (grammar) Punctuation;^[5][6] (Medieval Latin) a punctuation mark for a stop.^[5][6]

Related words

• pōnō
• positiō
• positus

References

1. ^ a b c d e f g h i Glare, P. G. W., ed. (2012), Oxford Latin Dictionary, 2nd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
2. ^ a b c d Köbler, Gerhard (2010), Lateinisches Abkunfts- und Wirkungswörterbuch für Altertum und Mittelalter, online ed., koeblergerhard.de
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 Thesaurus linguae Latinae (1900–), Leipzig: Teubner; Berlin: De Gruyter; open-access ed., Munich: Bayerische Akademie der Wissenschaften
5. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k Lewis, Charlton T.; Short, Charles (1879), A Latin Dictionary, Oxford: Clarendon Press
6. ^ a b c Niermeyer, J. F. (1976), Mediae Latinitatis Lexicon Minus, Leiden: Brill