purgativus

Forms

pūrgātīvus (feminine pūrgātīva, neuter pūrgātīvum); first/second-declension adjective^[1]

Etymology

It is formed from Latin pūrgō (“to cleanse”) + -īvus.^[2][3][4]

Earliest recorded meaning

It first appears in Late Latin in two fields.^[2] In the Ars rhetorica of Consultus Fortunatianus a plea for pardon is either purgativa (excusing) or deprecativa (begging), and the excusing kind rests on four grounds: error, chance, necessity and forgetfulness.^[2][3] In medicine Caelius Aurelianus (5th century) uses it of purgative medicines, which, he says, the Greeks call cathartic.^[2][5]

Semantic evolution

Caelius Aurelianus also uses the neuter plural as a noun, “purgatives”, given by clyster or by mouth.^[2] In Thomas Aquinas it means “cleansing”, as a synonym of purgatorius.^[6]

Medieval British Latin used it of what frees from impurity, also figuratively, of purgative medicine, and of what cleanses spiritually.^[7] English took purgative in the late 14th century as a medical term, partly through French.^[4]

Timeline

• 5th century AD – Caelius Aurelianus calls purgative medicines purgativa medicamina.^[2][5]
• late 14th century – English borrows it as purgative, in medicine.^[4]

Meanings

Adjective

1. (rhetoric) Excusing, exculpatory, of a plea.^[2][3]
2. (medicine) purgative, cathartic; as a neuter plural noun, purgatives.^[8][2][9]
3. (Medieval Latin) Cleansing, purifying, also spiritually.^[7][6]

Related words

• English purgative

References

1. ^ a b c Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f g h Thesaurus linguae Latinae (1900–), Leipzig: Teubner; Berlin: De Gruyter; open-access ed., Munich: Bayerische Akademie der Wissenschaften
3. ^ a b c Georges, Karl Ernst (1913–1918), Ausführliches lateinisch-deutsches Handwörterbuch, 8th ed., ed. Heinrich Georges, Hannover; Leipzig: Hahn
4. ^ a b c Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
5. ^ a b Köbler, Gerhard (2010), Lateinisches Abkunfts- und Wirkungswörterbuch für Altertum und Mittelalter, online ed., koeblergerhard.de
6. ^ a b Schütz, Ludwig (1895), Thomas-Lexikon, 2nd ed., Paderborn: F. Schöningh
7. ^ a b Latham, R. E., D. R. Howlett, R. K. Ashdowne, et al. (1975–2013), Dictionary of Medieval Latin from British Sources, London: British Academy / Oxford University Press
8. ^ Lewis, Charlton T.; Short, Charles (1879), A Latin Dictionary, Oxford: Clarendon Press
9. ^ Gaffiot, Félix (2016), Dictionnaire latin-français, new ed. by Gérard Gréco et al. (Gaffiot 2016), online ed.