scateo

Forms

scateō (present infinitive scatēre, perfect active scatuī); second conjugation, no passive, no supine stem^[1] Early Latin also has a third-conjugation scatō, scatere, used by Ennius and Plautus and regularly by Lucretius.^[2][3][4]

Etymology

The origin is uncertain.^[3] It is perhaps inherited from Proto-Indo-European *skeHt- (“to spring, leap”),^[1] and the OLD and Lewis & Short compare Lithuanian skàsti (“to jump, hop”).^[2][3][1]

Earliest recorded meaning

Its earliest authors are Plautus and Ennius: Plautus speaks of a flute girl who could drink the fountain Pirene dry sī vīnō scatat, “if it gushed with wine”,^[2][3] and Ennius writes fontēs scatere, herbīs prāta convestīrier, “springs gush forth, meadows are clothed with grass”.^[2][4]

Semantic evolution

Lucretius uses the old form scatit of a spring of fresh water in the sea and of light pouring forth, and Varro of hot springs.^[2][3] With the ablative it means “to gush with”: Livy describes a citadel scatēns fontibus, “gushing with springs”.^[2][3]

From gushing it came to mean swarming and teeming: Horace speaks of a sea teeming with monsters, Pomponius Mela of the Nile teeming with fish, and Pliny the Elder of Spain abounding in metals.^[2][3][4] Lewis & Short note that it does not appear in prose before the Augustan age.^[3] Gellius uses it of people bubbling over with words or wit, and writes that Socrates' wife Xanthippe molestiārum muliebrium per diem perque noctem scatēbat, “overflowed day and night with womanly annoyances”.^[2][4] The Vulgate uses it of swarming with worms.^[3]

Timeline

• c. 250–184 BC – Plautus uses it with the ablative, “to gush with”.^[2][5]
• 204–169 BC – Ennius uses it of springs gushing forth.^[2][5]
• 96–55 BC – Lucretius uses the third-conjugation form.^[2][3][5]
• 65–8 BC – Horace uses it of the sea teeming with monsters.^[2][5]
• c. 165 AD – Gellius uses it of people bubbling over with words.^[2][5]

Meanings

Verb

1. (of liquids) To gush forth, well up;^[2][3] (of fire or light) to burst forth.^[2][3]
2. To gush (with), to stream (with) (with the ablative).^[2]
3. To swarm, teem, abound (with the ablative or genitive).^[2][3][4]
4. (of people) To bubble over (with feelings, words or ideas).^[2]

Word family

• praescateō
• scatebra
• scaturriō
• scatūriō

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 m n o p q r Glare, P. G. W., ed. (2012), Oxford Latin Dictionary, 2nd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
3. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m Lewis, Charlton T.; Short, Charles (1879), A Latin Dictionary, Oxford: Clarendon Press
4. ^ a b c d e Georges, Karl Ernst (1913–1918), Ausführliches lateinisch-deutsches Handwörterbuch, 8th ed., ed. Heinrich Georges, Hannover; Leipzig: Hahn
5. ^ a b c d e Köbler, Gerhard (2010), Lateinisches Abkunfts- und Wirkungswörterbuch für Altertum und Mittelalter, online ed., koeblergerhard.de