seorsum

Forms

seorsum (not comparable)^[1] It is also spelled sorsum and has a by-form seorsus; in comedy and usually in Lucretius it is scanned as two syllables.^[2][3] It is often wrongly written seorsim.^[3]

Etymology

It is the adverb of seorsus “separate”, contracted from ⟨*sēvorsus⟩: sē- (“apart”) with the participle of vertō “to turn”.^[2][3][1] De Vaan lists it among the words with the prefix in its short form ⟨se-⟩.^[4]

Earliest recorded meaning

Köbler dates it from Plautus,^[5] who has someone wish a person shut up separately in a little room.^[2]

Semantic evolution

It is separately, distinctly, apart from the rest, often with ab: Terence thanks everyone and someone separately besides, Cato wants the best hay stored apart, and Livy has the Aequi and the Volsci fortify separate camps.^[2] With ab it also means otherwise, differently, as in Plautus' I think differently from you.^[3][2] Lucretius uses it with a plain ablative, of the eye seeing nothing apart from the body.^[2] Lewis & Short find it mostly before the classical period: not in Caesar, Virgil or Horace, and in Cicero only once, in his definition of sēditiō as citizens going apart to different sides.^[3][2] Church Latin glosses it aside, apart, particularly or privately.^[6]

Timeline

• c. 250–184 BC – Plautus of shutting someone up apart.^[2][5]
• 190–159 BC – Terence of thanking someone separately.^[2][5]
• 234–149 BC – Cato of storing hay apart.^[2][5]
• 81–43 BC – Cicero's definition of sedition.^[2][3][5]

Meanings

Adverb

1. Separately, apart, distinctly.^[2][3][1][6]
2. With ab, apart from; otherwise, differently from.^[2][3]

Related words

• seorsus
• vertō
• sēparātim

References

1. ^ a b c Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m Glare, P. G. W., ed. (2012), Oxford Latin Dictionary, 2nd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
3. ^ a b c d e f g h 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 d e 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