repauso

Forms

repausō (present infinitive repausāre, perfect active repausāvī, supine repausātum); first conjugation, no passive^[1] Also spelled ripausō in a 4th-century Christian inscription.^[2]

Etymology

It is from Latin re- (“back, again”) + pausō (“to halt, rest”),^[2][1] the verb made from pausa (“pause, halt”).^[3][1]

Earliest recorded meaning

It first appears in grave inscriptions from the 2nd–3rd centuries AD on, where the passer-by is asked to stop and pause to read the epitaph: tunc stas, viator, et repauses, relege “then you stop, traveller, and rest a little, read it again”.^[2][3]

Semantic evolution

In Christian prose from the Old Latin Bible and Jerome on it meant “rest, take one's rest”, and transitively “give rest to, refresh”: the Old Latin text of Matthew 11:28 has et ego vos repausabo “and I will give you rest”, where the Vulgate has reficiam.^[2] John Cassian uses it of looking after and feeding a widow.^[2][4][5] It lives on in Italian riposare, French reposer and Spanish reposar, and in Romanian răposa, which also means “die”.^[2][1]

Timeline

• 2nd–3rd century AD – Epitaphs ask the traveller to stop and repausare.^[2]
• c. 360–c. 435 AD – John Cassian uses it for “give rest to, comfort, feed”.^[4][6][7]
• c. 383–419/420 AD – Jerome uses it for resting under a tree, in his translation of Origen on Ezekiel.^[2][6][7]

Meanings

Verb

1. (intransitive) To halt for a while, pause.^[3][2]
2. (intransitive) To rest, repose, lie at rest.^[4][6][1]
3. (transitive) To give rest to, refresh.^[6][2]
4. (transitive) To calm, soothe; to comfort or feed.^[4][5][1]

Related words

• pausō
• requiēscō

References

1. ^ a b c d e f g h Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f g h i j Thesaurus linguae Latinae (1900–), Leipzig: Teubner; Berlin: De Gruyter; open-access ed., Munich: Bayerische Akademie der Wissenschaften
3. ^ a b c Glare, P. G. W., ed. (2012), Oxford Latin Dictionary, 2nd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
4. ^ a b c d Georges, Karl Ernst (1913–1918), Ausführliches lateinisch-deutsches Handwörterbuch, 8th ed., ed. Heinrich Georges, Hannover; Leipzig: Hahn
5. ^ a b Gaffiot, Félix (2016), Dictionnaire latin-français, new ed. by Gérard Gréco et al. (Gaffiot 2016), online ed.
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 Köbler, Gerhard (2010), Lateinisches Abkunfts- und Wirkungswörterbuch für Altertum und Mittelalter, online ed., koeblergerhard.de