putrefacio

Forms

putrefaciō (present infinitive putrefacere, perfect active putrefēcī, supine putrefactum); third (-iō variant) conjugation, suppletive^[1]

Etymology

It is from Latin putreō (“to be rotten”) + faciō (“to make”),^[2][3] and Wiktionary analyses it as puter (“rotten”) and faciō.^[1] Puter goes back to Proto-Italic *putri- (“rotten”).^[4]

Earliest recorded meaning

It is found from Varro (116–27 BC) on,^[4][5] meaning to make rotten: he writes of bees being born from the rotted carcass of an ox.^[2]

Semantic evolution

Lucretius has it with a long ⟨e⟩ (putrē-): things “rotted, as it were, by rain” breed little worms (quasi putrefacta per imbris, vermiculos pariunt).^[2] Without the idea of decay it meant to make crumble or disintegrate, as Livy says of rocks treated with vinegar.^[2] Columella writes of moisture rotting the seeds in the ground, and the passive putrefīō meant to become rotten.^[3][2] The TLL notes passive present forms from Julius Valerius and Arnobius on.^[6]

It lived on in Ecclesiastical Latin,^[7] and English putrefy comes from Old French putréfier and directly from Latin.^[8]

Timeline

• 116–27 BC – Varro uses it of a rotting carcass.^[2][5]
• 96–55 BC – Lucretius uses it of things rotted by rain.^[2][5]
• 59 BC–17 AD – Livy uses it of rocks made to crumble.^[2][5]
• 1st century AD – Columella uses it of seeds rotting in the soil.^[2][5]
• late 14th century – English borrows it as putrefien.^[8]

Meanings

Verb

1. To cause to rot or decay, to putrefy; in the passive, to become rotten.^[2][3]
2. To cause to crumble, to disintegrate.^[2]

Word family

• putrefactiō

Related words

• English putrefy

References

1. ^ a b c d Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ 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
3. ^ a b c Lewis, Charlton T.; Short, Charles (1879), A Latin Dictionary, Oxford: Clarendon Press
4. ^ 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
5. ^ a b c d e Köbler, Gerhard (2010), Lateinisches Abkunfts- und Wirkungswörterbuch für Altertum und Mittelalter, online ed., koeblergerhard.de
6. ^ Thesaurus linguae Latinae (1900–), Leipzig: Teubner; Berlin: De Gruyter; open-access ed., Munich: Bayerische Akademie der Wissenschaften
7. ^ Stelten, Leo F. (1995), Dictionary of Ecclesiastical Latin, Peabody, Mass.: Hendrickson
8. ^ a b Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com