praegravo

Forms

praegravō (present infinitive praegravāre, perfect active praegravāvī, supine praegravātum); first conjugation^[1][2]

Etymology

It is from Latin prae- + gravō (“to weigh down”).^[1][3] The TLL allows that it may instead have been made from the adjective praegravis (“very heavy”), whose sense of the prefix it matches better.^[4] De Vaan lists gravō (“to make heavy, oppress”) among the derivatives of gravis (“heavy”), which he traces to Proto-Italic *gʷrau- and Proto-Indo-European *gʷreh₂-u- (“heavy”).^[5] Cognate with Sanskrit गुरु (gurú-, “heavy”) and Ancient Greek βαρύς (barús, “heavy”).^[5]

Earliest recorded meaning

Lewis and Short think it perhaps not older than the Augustan age.^[2] The OLD's first example is in Horace's Satires: a body loaded with the excesses of the day before weighs the mind down with it, corpus onustum hesternīs vitiīs animum quoque praegravat ūnā.^[1][6]

Semantic evolution

In its literal sense it is used of a physical load: Livy has shields weighed down by the spears stuck in them, and Columella a head or ears that droop.^[1][2] Figuratively it meant to lie heavy on someone or something: Horace speaks of a man who weighs down the arts ranked below his own, and Livy of a crowd of people that burdens a kingdom.^[1][2] Without an object it meant to outweigh or preponderate, as in Seneca and Suetonius, who says that the rest of a man's deeds and words outweigh the good.^[1][2] The TLL finds it rarely in verse (twice in Horace, once each in the Priapea, Grattius and Terentianus Maurus) and much more often in prose from Livy on.^[4]

In the 4th century Ammianus Marcellinus uses it of not burdening anyone with taxes,^[7] and Church Latin kept the sense of oppressing or weighing down.^[8]

Timeline

• 65–8 BC – Horace uses it of a body that weighs down the mind.^[1][9]
• 59 BC–17 AD – Livy uses it of shields weighed down by spears.^[1][9]
• 1st century AD – Columella uses it of drooping ears.^[1][9]
• 4 BC–65 AD – Seneca uses it in the sense “outweigh”.^[1][9]
• c. 75–c. 150 AD – Suetonius uses it of deeds that outweigh others.^[1][9]
• c. 390 AD – Ammianus Marcellinus uses it of a burden of taxes.^[7][9]

Meanings

Verb

1. To weigh down, load heavily.^[1][2]
2. (figurative) To lie heavy on, burden, oppress.^[1][2][8]
3. (intransitive) To outweigh, preponderate.^[1][2]

Related words

• praegravis
• gravō
• gravis

References

1. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n Glare, P. G. W., ed. (2012), Oxford Latin Dictionary, 2nd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
2. ^ a b c d e f g h Lewis, Charlton T.; Short, Charles (1879), A Latin Dictionary, Oxford: Clarendon Press
3. ^ Bianchi, Rossella; Lelli, Olga (2014), VOLI: Vocabolario di latino, Florence: Le Monnier
4. ^ a b Thesaurus linguae Latinae (1900–), Leipzig: Teubner; Berlin: De Gruyter; open-access ed., Munich: Bayerische Akademie der Wissenschaften
5. ^ 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
6. ^ Conte, Gian Biagio; Pianezzola, Emilio; Ranucci, Giuliano (2010), il Latino: Vocabolario della lingua latina, 3rd ed., Florence: Le Monnier
7. ^ a b Georges, Karl Ernst (1913–1918), Ausführliches lateinisch-deutsches Handwörterbuch, 8th ed., ed. Heinrich Georges, Hannover; Leipzig: Hahn
8. ^ a b Stelten, Leo F. (1995), Dictionary of Ecclesiastical Latin, Peabody, Mass.: Hendrickson
9. ^ a b c d e f Köbler, Gerhard (2010), Lateinisches Abkunfts- und Wirkungswörterbuch für Altertum und Mittelalter, online ed., koeblergerhard.de