recingo

Forms

recingō (present infinitive recingere, perfect active recinxī, supine recinctum); third conjugation^[1]

Etymology

It is from Latin re- + cingō (“to gird”).^[2][1][3][4] De Vaan calls the etymology of the simple verb uncertain; he reconstructs Proto-Italic *keng- with a question mark.^[5]

Earliest recorded meaning

It is first found in Virgil, in the phrase in veste recinctā, “in an ungirt robe”, in the fourth book of the Aeneid.^[6][7][8]

Semantic evolution

Lewis and Short call it a poetic word of the Augustan period, frequent in Ovid.^[7] It meant to untie or unbelt a garment, and in the passive, used as a middle, to take off a garment by untying it.^[2][9] Ovid uses it of untying the girdle, zōnam, and of tunics,^[7][9] and in the Metamorphoses of a snake that had been worn as a girdle and is taken off, sūmptum recingitur anguem.^[2][8] Statius uses the passive with an accusative of laying the sword aside, ferrum recingī.^[2][6]

The opposite sense, to gird again, appears in Ammianus Marcellinus, of being girded with arms again for military service.^[9][8][6]

Timeline

• 70–19 BC – Virgil speaks of an ungirt robe.^[6][10]
• 43 BC–18 AD – Ovid uses it of untying a girdle and of taking off a garment.^[7][9][10]
• c. 45–96 AD – Statius uses it of laying aside a sword.^[2][10]
• c. 390 AD – Ammianus Marcellinus uses it in the sense “to gird again” for service.^[9][10]

Meanings

Verb

1. To untie or unbelt (a garment); to unfasten (a girdle).^[2][7][9]
2. (passive, used as middle) To take off a garment by untying it; to lay aside (a belt, a sword).^[2][8]
3. (Late Latin) To gird again (with arms).^[9][8]

References

1. ^ a b c d Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f g Glare, P. G. W., ed. (2012), Oxford Latin Dictionary, 2nd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
3. ^ Thesaurus linguae Latinae (1900–), Leipzig: Teubner; Berlin: De Gruyter; open-access ed., Munich: Bayerische Akademie der Wissenschaften
4. ^ Bianchi, Rossella; Lelli, Olga (2014), VOLI: Vocabolario di latino, Florence: Le Monnier
5. ^ de Vaan, Michiel (2008), Etymological Dictionary of Latin and the other Italic Languages, Leiden Indo-European Etymological Dictionary Series 7, Leiden; Boston: Brill
6. ^ a b c d Conte, Gian Biagio; Pianezzola, Emilio; Ranucci, Giuliano (2010), il Latino: Vocabolario della lingua latina, 3rd ed., Florence: Le Monnier
7. ^ a b c d e Lewis, Charlton T.; Short, Charles (1879), A Latin Dictionary, Oxford: Clarendon Press
8. ^ a b c d e Gaffiot, Félix (2016), Dictionnaire latin-français, new ed. by Gérard Gréco et al. (Gaffiot 2016), online ed.
9. ^ a b c d e f g Georges, Karl Ernst (1913–1918), Ausführliches lateinisch-deutsches Handwörterbuch, 8th ed., ed. Heinrich Georges, Hannover; Leipzig: Hahn
10. ^ a b c d Köbler, Gerhard (2010), Lateinisches Abkunfts- und Wirkungswörterbuch für Altertum und Mittelalter, online ed., koeblergerhard.de