protero

Forms

prōterō (present infinitive prōterere, perfect active prōtrīvī, supine prōtrītum); third conjugation^[1]

Etymology

It is from Latin prō- + terō (“to rub”).^[2][1][3] De Vaan traces terō to Proto-Italic *tera- and Proto-Indo-European *terh₁- (“to rub”), with cognates such as Ancient Greek τείρω (teírō, “to oppress, distress”) and Ancient Greek τρίβω (tríbō, “to rub, wear out”).^[4]

Earliest recorded meaning

Plautus uses it first, in the Truculentus: someone threatens to trample a woman underfoot like a sow her piglets.^[2][5]

Semantic evolution

It means to tread underfoot, trample down: Caesar has cavalry trampling the enemy from behind, Virgil a chariot crushing ranks, Ovid flowering fields trodden down, and Valerius Maximus men thrown down to be trampled by elephants.^[5] Columella uses it of treading out grain,^[2][5] and Cicero, in his Aratea, of the tracks that stars wear in their course.^[2] Statius has limbs crushed with beams.^[2] Figuratively it is to crush, defeat or oppress: Horace has the Carthaginians crushed in war, Tacitus a battle line broken, and Cicero someone to be trampled and crushed at home.^[5][2] Horace also uses it of the seasons, summer driving out spring.^[5] The participle prōtrītus is worn out by use, trite, in Gellius.^[5][2] Stelten gives "tread down, trample under foot" for Church Latin,^[6] and Gregory of Tours has an infinitive prōterīre and a perfect prōteruit.^[3]

Timeline

• c. 250–184 BC – Plautus of trampling underfoot.^[2][5]
• c. 50 BC – Caesar of cavalry trampling the enemy.^[5]
• 81–43 BC – Cicero of oppression and of the tracks of the stars.^[5][2]
• 65–8 BC – Horace of summer driving out spring.^[5]
• c. 165 AD – Gellius of trite words.^[2][5]

Meanings

Verb

1. To tread underfoot, trample down, crush; to tread out (grain); to batter down.^[2][5][1]
2. (figurative) To crush, oppress, overthrow, defeat; to drive out, supplant.^[2][5][1]
3. To make trite by overuse.^[2][5]

Word family

• prōtrīmentum

Related words

• terō
• conculcō
• prōculcō

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 m 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 f g h i j k l m n Lewis, Charlton T.; Short, Charles (1879), A Latin Dictionary, Oxford: Clarendon Press
6. ^ Stelten, Leo F. (1995), Dictionary of Ecclesiastical Latin, Peabody, Mass.: Hendrickson