sopor

Forms

sopor m (genitive sopōris); third declension^[1]

Etymology

It is inherited from Proto-Italic *swépōs (“sleep”), from Proto-Indo-European *suep- (“to sleep”).^[2][1] De Vaan suggests an old collective ⟨*su̯ep-ōs⟩, or the regular outcome of a neuter ⟨*suep-r̥⟩, beside the root of somnus (“sleep”).^[2] Cognate with Sanskrit स्वपयति (svapáyati, “puts to sleep”), Ancient Greek ὕπνος (húpnos, “sleep”) and Old Norse sœfa (“to kill”).^[2][3][4]

Earliest recorded meaning

Plautus has “I put profit before sleep and rest” in the Rudens;^[3][5] de Vaan and Köbler also date it from Plautus.^[2][6]

Semantic evolution

It is sleep, especially deep or overpowering sleep, and the sleep of death, as Lucretius' soul carried into deep and everlasting sleep.^[3][5][1] In Celsus it is catalepsy, and it is also a drunken stupor.^[3][1] It is a sleeping draught or opiate, as Nepos' Dion, whose father was given a sleeping draught by the doctors.^[3][1] It is also sloth or torpor, as in the invective against Sallust ascribed to Cicero.^[3][1]

Lewis and Short find it mostly in poetry and post-Augustan prose, never in Cicero.^[5] Church Latin glosses it “sleep, heavy sleep, lethargy”.^[7] English sopor, “deep, unnatural sleep”, dates from the 1670s, with a figurative use in the 1650s.^[4]

Timeline

• c. 250–184 BC – Plautus of putting profit before sleep.^[3][6]
• 96–55 BC – Lucretius of the sleep of death.^[3][6]
• c. 100–24 BC – Nepos of a sleeping draught.^[3][6]
• 14–37 AD – Celsus of catalepsy.^[3][6]
• 1670s – Borrowed into English as sopor.^[4]

Meanings

Noun

1. Deep sleep; sleep; the sleep of death.^[3][5][1][7]
2. (medicine) Catalepsy; a stupor.^[3][1]
3. A sleeping draught, opiate.^[3][1]
4. Sloth, torpor, lethargy.^[3][1][7]

Word family

• insopor
• sopōrifer
• sopōrus
• sopōrātiō
• sopōrō

Related words

• sōpiō
• sopōrātus
• somnus
• English sopor

Usage notes

Döderlein calls somnus the usual prose word for sleep and sopor a choice poetic one; in prose sopor only has the causative sense, a means of bringing on sleep.^[8]

References

1. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d de Vaan, Michiel (2008), Etymological Dictionary of Latin and the other Italic Languages, Leiden Indo-European Etymological Dictionary Series 7, Leiden; Boston: Brill
3. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n Glare, P. G. W., ed. (2012), Oxford Latin Dictionary, 2nd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
4. ^ a b c Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
5. ^ a b c d Lewis, Charlton T.; Short, Charles (1879), A Latin Dictionary, Oxford: Clarendon Press
6. ^ a b c d e Köbler, Gerhard (2010), Lateinisches Abkunfts- und Wirkungswörterbuch für Altertum und Mittelalter, online ed., koeblergerhard.de
7. ^ a b c Stelten, Leo F. (1995), Dictionary of Ecclesiastical Latin, Peabody, Mass.: Hendrickson
8. ^ Döderlein, Ludwig (1874), Döderlein’s Hand-book of Latin Synonymes, tr. H. H. Arnold, Andover: W. F. Draper