Etymologically
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reformido

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Pronunciation

  • Classical: [rɛ.fɔrˈmiː.doː][1]
  • Ecclesiastical: [re.forˈmiː.do][1]

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

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