tabes

Forms

tābēs f (genitive tābis); third declension^[1] Lucretius has the ablative tābē.^[2]

Etymology

It is formed from the stem of tābeō (“to waste away”), which de Vaan traces to Proto-Italic *tāf-ē- (“to be melting”) and Proto-Indo-European *teh₂-bʰ-eh₁- (“to be melting”).^[3][2] He compares Ancient Greek τήκω (tḗkō, “to melt”), Old Irish taïd (“melts”) and Russian та́ять (tájatʹ, “to melt, thaw”); the OLD and Etymonline add Old English þawian, whence English thaw.^[2][1][4] The sense “melt” survives in Latin only in Livius Andronicus; from “melt away” came “waste away”, the sense of all later texts.^[3]

Earliest recorded meaning

Köbler finds it first in Plautus;^[5] de Vaan dates it from Lucretius.^[3]

Semantic evolution

It is a wasting away of the body, from disease or emotion, and a wasting disease or plague: Cicero counts it among the effects of grief, and Livy uses it in a simile of a wasting disease.^[2][6] It is also corruption and decay, the stench of rotting bodies, and figuratively moral corruption, as in Seneca.^[2] Finally it is the liquid of decay: gore and matter from wounds, the water of melting clouds in Lucretius, and the poisonous ooze of a tunic in Ovid.^[2] English took it over in the 17th century as a medical term for progressive emaciation.^[4]

Timeline

• c. 250–184 BC – Plautus uses it.^[5]
• 96–55 BC – Lucretius of melted rain.^[2][5]
• 81–43 BC – Cicero of the wasting of grief.^[2][5]
• 1650s – English tabes, “progressive emaciation”, is taken from it.^[4]

Meanings

Noun

1. A wasting away, consumption; a wasting disease.^[2][6][1]
2. Corruption, putrefaction, decay; foulness; moral corruption.^[2][6][1]
3. The liquid of decay: gore, matter from a wound; melted fluid; a poisonous ooze.^[2][1]
4. (medicine) Progressive wasting of the body; in modern use, wasting from syphilis of the spinal cord.^[1][4]

Related words

• tābeō
• tābēscō
• tābidus
• tābum
• tābificus

References

1. ^ a b c d e f g h Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k Glare, P. G. W., ed. (2012), Oxford Latin Dictionary, 2nd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
3. ^ a b c de Vaan, Michiel (2008), Etymological Dictionary of Latin and the other Italic Languages, Leiden Indo-European Etymological Dictionary Series 7, Leiden; Boston: Brill
4. ^ a b c d Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
5. ^ a b c d Köbler, Gerhard (2010), Lateinisches Abkunfts- und Wirkungswörterbuch für Altertum und Mittelalter, online ed., koeblergerhard.de
6. ^ a b c Lewis, Charlton T.; Short, Charles (1879), A Latin Dictionary, Oxford: Clarendon Press