scelestus

Forms

scelestus (feminine scelesta, neuter scelestum, comparative scelestior, superlative scelestissimus); first/second-declension adjective^[1]

Etymology

It is formed from scelus (“crime, wickedness”) with the suffix -tus, like fūnestus (“deadly”) from ⟨fūnus⟩.^[2][3][1] De Vaan traces ⟨scelus⟩ to Proto-Italic *skelos and Proto-Indo-European *skel-os (“curve, bending”), with a shift from “crooked” to “wicked”, cognate with Ancient Greek σκολιός (skoliós, “crooked, unjust”) and σκέλος (skélos, “leg”).^[4]

Earliest recorded meaning

Plautus has “I think I am the most cursed of men” in the Casina;^[2] Köbler gives Cicero.^[5]

Semantic evolution

It is first lying under a curse, doomed or calamitous, as in Plautus, and pityingly of someone foolish, as Plautus' wife who thought her husband honest.^[2][1] It is guilty of crime, wicked or villainous, and as a colloquial insult “scoundrel”, as Plautus' “I'll cut out that wicked tongue of yours, you rascal!”; of acts it is criminal, as the pimp's house that serves a wicked slavery in the Curculio.^[2][3][1] Lewis and Short find it most often in early Latin, and as a noun a rogue or miscreant.^[3][1]

Döderlein says that scelestus refers to the mind, one prone to crime, and sceleratus to acts, one stained with crime.^[6] Church Latin glosses it “wicked, abominable, shameless, infamous, accursed”.^[7]

Timeline

• c. 250–184 BC – Plautus of a cursed man and of a wicked tongue.^[2][5]
• 81–43 BC – Cicero.^[5]

Meanings

Adjective

1. Under a curse, doomed, calamitous; unfortunate, misguided.^[2][1]
2. Wicked, villainous, criminal, abominable;^[2][3][1][7] roguish.^[3]

Noun

1. A wicked person, a scoundrel, rogue.^[3][1]

Word family

• scelestē

Related words

• scelus
• scelerātus
• nefārius

References

1. ^ a b c d e f g h i j Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f g Glare, P. G. W., ed. (2012), Oxford Latin Dictionary, 2nd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
3. ^ a b c d e f Lewis, Charlton T.; Short, Charles (1879), A Latin Dictionary, Oxford: Clarendon Press
4. ^ 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 Köbler, Gerhard (2010), Lateinisches Abkunfts- und Wirkungswörterbuch für Altertum und Mittelalter, online ed., koeblergerhard.de
6. ^ Döderlein, Ludwig (1874), Döderlein’s Hand-book of Latin Synonymes, tr. H. H. Arnold, Andover: W. F. Draper
7. ^ a b Stelten, Leo F. (1995), Dictionary of Ecclesiastical Latin, Peabody, Mass.: Hendrickson