tabeo

Forms

tābeō (present infinitive tābēre, perfect active tābuī); second conjugation, no passive, no supine stem^[1]

Etymology

It is inherited from Proto-Italic *tāf-ē- (“to be melting”), inherited from Proto-Indo-European *teh₂-bʰ-eh₁- (“to be melting”), a stative verb built on an enlarged form of the root.^[2] De Vaan notes that the enlargement seen in Latin ⟨b⟩ could in theory go back to PIE /b/ or /bʰ/, but since /b/ was a very rare sound in PIE, /bʰ/ is much more likely.^[2] The Oxford Latin Dictionary analyses the verb as formed from Latin tābēs + -eō.^[3]

Cognate with Old Irish taïd (“to melt, dissolve”), Ancient Greek τήκω (tḗkō, “to melt”) (Doric τάκω (tákō)) and Ancient Greek τακερός (takerós, “melting, soft”).^[2] Wiktionary adds Old Armenian թանամ (tʻanam, “to wet”) and the English word thaw.^[1]

Earliest recorded meaning

De Vaan dates the verb from Ennius on.^[2] He adds that the original meaning “to be melting” is attested only in Livius Andronicus, who has the inchoative tābēscō (“to melt away”); all later uses in Latin rest on the developed sense “to waste away”.^[2]

Semantic evolution

In Classical poetry the verb describes bodies wasting or rotting away and things dissolving: Lucretius has seeds that “grow thin and waste away” in turn, and Ovid bodies that rot.^[4][3] Virgil uses the present participle of wasted cheeks and of limbs dripping with brine, a sense Georges and Gaffiot give as “to drip, run with”.^[5][6]

The verb stayed mostly poetic.^[4]

Timeline

• 204–169 BC – Ennius uses the verb.^[2][7]
• 96–55 BC – Lucretius uses it of seeds that waste away.^[4][7]
• 70–19 BC – Virgil applies the participle tābēns to cheeks and to limbs wet with brine.^[4][5][7]
• 43 BC–18 AD – Ovid writes corpora tabent, “bodies rot”.^[4][5][7]

Meanings

Verb

1. To melt, melt away.^[1][4]
2. To waste away; to rot away, decay.^[3][4]
3. To drip or run (with a liquid).^[5][6]

Word family

• tābidus
• tābēscō

Related words

• tābum

References

1. ^ a b c d e Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f 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 Glare, P. G. W., ed. (2012), Oxford Latin Dictionary, 2nd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
4. ^ a b c d e f g Lewis, Charlton T.; Short, Charles (1879), A Latin Dictionary, Oxford: Clarendon Press
5. ^ a b c d Georges, Karl Ernst (1913–1918), Ausführliches lateinisch-deutsches Handwörterbuch, 8th ed., ed. Heinrich Georges, Hannover; Leipzig: Hahn
6. ^ a b Gaffiot, Félix (2016), Dictionnaire latin-français, new ed. by Gérard Gréco et al. (Gaffiot 2016), online ed.
7. ^ a b c d Köbler, Gerhard (2010), Lateinisches Abkunfts- und Wirkungswörterbuch für Altertum und Mittelalter, online ed., koeblergerhard.de