refercio

Forms

referciō (present infinitive refercīre, perfect active refersī, supine refertum); fourth conjugation^[1] It is also spelled ⟨refarciō⟩.^[2][1]

Etymology

It is from Latin re- + farciō (“to stuff, cram”).^[2][3][4] De Vaan derives farciō from Proto-Italic *fark-je- (“to stuff”); the only cognate he can think of is Ancient Greek φράσσω (phrássō, “to fence in”), which does not quite match in meaning.^[5]

Earliest recorded meaning

The TLL finds it mostly in Cicero,^[3] who reminds the jurors in the Pro Sestio that the sewers were crammed with the bodies of citizens.^[6][7]

Semantic evolution

It means to cram or stuff full,^[2][8] and Lewis and Short note that it is used most often in its past participle refertus.^[6] Cicero uses it figuratively of filling books with childish fables, of filling human life with every kind of superstition, and of filling many ears with such talk.^[8][7][3] Pliny the Younger has farmers amazed at full granaries they had not filled themselves,^[3][6] and Silius Italicus has a man whom Fortune crammed with rich gifts.^[6][8] The TLL finds it otherwise only once each in Pliny and Silius before Minucius Felix.^[3]

Later writers used it of filling a treasury, as Lactantius does, and Ambrose of the Magi filling the cradle of Christ with eastern spoils.^[3] Lampridius has cibo plurimo referciebatur, of stuffing oneself with food.^[8]

Timeline

• 81–43 BC – Cicero uses it of sewers crammed with bodies.^[6][9]
• 25–101 AD – Silius Italicus uses it of a man filled with gifts by Fortune.^[6][9]
• c. 250–317 AD – Lactantius uses it of filling a treasury.^[3][9]
• c. 340–397 AD – Ambrose uses it of the Magi's gifts.^[3][9]

Meanings

Verb

1. To cram or stuff full, fill up.^[2][6]
2. (figurative) To fill (books, speech, life) with something.^[8][7]
3. To pack close together, accumulate.^[7][1]

Word family

• refertus

Related words

• farciō
• cōnferciō

References

1. ^ a b c d e Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d Glare, P. G. W., ed. (2012), Oxford Latin Dictionary, 2nd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
3. ^ 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
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 e f g Lewis, Charlton T.; Short, Charles (1879), A Latin Dictionary, Oxford: Clarendon Press
7. ^ a b c d Gaffiot, Félix (2016), Dictionnaire latin-français, new ed. by Gérard Gréco et al. (Gaffiot 2016), online ed.
8. ^ a b c d e Georges, Karl Ernst (1913–1918), Ausführliches lateinisch-deutsches Handwörterbuch, 8th ed., ed. Heinrich Georges, Hannover; Leipzig: Hahn
9. ^ a b c d Köbler, Gerhard (2010), Lateinisches Abkunfts- und Wirkungswörterbuch für Altertum und Mittelalter, online ed., koeblergerhard.de