reformido

Forms

reformīdō (present infinitive reformīdāre, perfect active reformīdāvī, supine reformīdātum); first conjugation^[1]

Etymology

It is from Latin re- + formīdō (“to fear, dread”).^[2][3][1] The verb is from the noun formīdō (“fear”),^[4] which de Vaan suggests may go back to ⟨*morm-⟩ and be connected with Ancient Greek μορμώ (mormṓ, “bogey”), since Latin has no verb ⟨*form-⟩ “to fear”.^[4]

Earliest recorded meaning

Its first example in the OLD is Cicero's speech for Roscius of Ameria, of judges “whose very name they dread”;^[2] the Rhetorica ad Herennium of the same years has men who in good times dread misfortune.^[2]

Semantic evolution

It means to shrink from something in fear, to dread it, also of a future event.^[2][5] It is also to shun something from caution or taste, as in Cicero's “not that he shrank from this style in despair, but rejected it by judgement”.^[2] Of things it is to recoil from treatment, as Virgil's vines whose arms should be pruned only when they no longer fear the knife, and Columella uses it of a bud that fails to grow.^[2]

Church Latin glosses it “dread”.^[6]

Timeline

• 81–43 BC – Cicero of dreading judges and of shunning a style.^[2][7]
• 70–19 BC – Virgil of vines that fear the knife.^[2][7]
• 1st century AD – Columella of buds that shrink from growth.^[2][7]

Meanings

Verb

1. To dread, shrink from in fear.^[2][5][1]
2. To shun, recoil from.^[2][5]
3. Of plants, to shrink from treatment or from growth.^[2]

Word family

• reformīdātiō

Related words

• formīdō

References

1. ^ a b c d e Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l 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. ^ 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 Lewis, Charlton T.; Short, Charles (1879), A Latin Dictionary, Oxford: Clarendon Press
6. ^ Stelten, Leo F. (1995), Dictionary of Ecclesiastical Latin, Peabody, Mass.: Hendrickson
7. ^ a b c Köbler, Gerhard (2010), Lateinisches Abkunfts- und Wirkungswörterbuch für Altertum und Mittelalter, online ed., koeblergerhard.de