Etymologically
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pravus

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Pronunciation

  • Classical: [ˈpraː.wʊs][1]
  • Ecclesiastical: [ˈpraː.vus][1]

Forms

prāvus (feminine prāva, neuter prāvum, comparative prāvior, superlative prāvissimus, adverb prāvē); first/second-declension adjective[1]

Etymology

De Vaan finds no etymology for it.[2] Wiktionary traces it to Proto-Italic *prāwos, also behind the Faliscan first name ⟨prauios⟩.[1] The OLD reconstructs ⟨*pra-uos⟩ and compares prātum (“meadow”), and Köbler cites Pokorny's Proto-Indo-European *prā- (“to bend”).[3][4]

Earliest recorded meaning

De Vaan gives Plautus as its first author.[2] In the Bacchides a tutor tells a slave that without him he would have kept his pupil upright, but now Pistoclerus has become prāvus, corrupt.[3]

Semantic evolution

Its literal sense is crooked or awry, as Lucretius' crooked ruler, and of the body twisted or deformed, opposed to rēctus.[3][5] Most often it is morally crooked, corrupt or depraved, and in a weaker sense wrong-headed, as a misguided generosity in the Rhetorica ad Herennium.[3] Of actions and opinions it is faulty or wrong (Terence), of persons incompetent, as Livy's king who was no bad general, and of things vitiated.[3]

Church Latin glosses it “evil, perverse, crooked, deformed”.[6]

Timeline

  • c. 250–184 BC – Plautus of a corrupted youth.[2][3][4]
  • 190–159 BC – Terence of a faulty reason.[3][4]
  • 96–55 BC – Lucretius of a crooked ruler.[3][4]

Meanings

Adjective

  1. Crooked, awry, (of the body) deformed.[3][1][6]
  2. Corrupt, depraved, wicked; perverse, misguided.[3][1][6]
  3. Faulty, wrong, (of persons) incompetent, bad.[3][1]

Word family

  • dēprāvō
  • prāvē
  • prāvitās

References

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