Etymologically
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seminarium

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Forms

sēminārium n (genitive sēmināriī or sēminārī); second declension[1]

Etymology

It is from Latin sēmen (“seed”) + -ārium (“place for”), the neuter of the adjective sēminārius (“of seed”).[2][1][3] De Vaan traces sēmen to Proto-Italic *sēmn and Proto-Indo-European *seh₁-mn (“seed”), from the root of serō1 (“to sow”).[4] He compares Lithuanian sė́menys (“linseed”).[4]

Earliest recorded meaning

Köbler dates it from Cicero,[5] who calls a group seminarium Catilinarum, a nursery of future Catilines.[2]

Semantic evolution

Its proper sense is a nursery of young trees.[2] Figuratively it is a breeding ground: Varro calls wine a sweet seedbed of merriment, Cicero speaks of a nursery of triumphs, Livy calls the knights the seedbed of the senate, and Apuleius calls a person the source of all evils.[2] In Church Latin it is a seminary, a school for training clergy.[6] English seminary (mid-15th century) first meant a plot where plants are raised from seed; the figurative sense dates from the 1590s and the sense of a school for priests from the 1580s.[3]

Timeline

  • 116–27 BC – Varro, of wine as a seedbed of merriment.[2][5]
  • 81–43 BC – Cicero, of a nursery of Catilines.[2][5]
  • 59 BC–17 AD – Livy, of the knights as the seedbed of the senate.[2][5]
  • mid-15th century – Borrowed into English as seminary, a seed plot.[3]
  • 1580s – English seminary as a school for training priests.[3]

Meanings

Noun

  1. A nursery of young trees, a seed plot.[2][1][3]
  2. (figurative) A breeding ground, source.[2][1]
  3. (Ecclesiastical Latin) A seminary, a school for training clergy.[6][1]

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 Glare, P. G. W., ed. (2012), Oxford Latin Dictionary, 2nd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
  3. ^ a b c d e Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
  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 d Köbler, Gerhard (2010), Lateinisches Abkunfts- und Wirkungswörterbuch für Altertum und Mittelalter, online ed., koeblergerhard.de
  6. ^ a b Stelten, Leo F. (1995), Dictionary of Ecclesiastical Latin, Peabody, Mass.: Hendrickson