Etymologically
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protero

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Pronunciation

  • Classical: [ˈproː.tɛ.roː][1]
  • Ecclesiastical: [ˈprɔː.te.ro][1]

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

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