Lucus a non lucendo: Enantiosemy in Ancient Latin Lexicography
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Adam Gitner
Abstract
Enantiosemes, words which express opposed meanings (also called auto-antonyms; e.g. altus, which can mean “high” or “low”, or the English “cleave”, which can mean “cut” or “stick together”), present a practical problem for the lexicographer. My paper surveys enantiosemes as they are explicitly discussed by ancient Roman lexicographers and provides a descriptive typology. Roman scholars distinguish between genuine auto-antonyms, which they sometimes call voces mediae (e.g. valetudo for “health” or “sickness”), and cases of etymology by antiphrasis (e.g. lucus a non lucendo), whereby a name is given through some kind of opposition. This latter group of etymologies-by-antiphrasis can be further subdivided between cases of euphemism and irony. The paper concludes with a short lexicon of Latin enantiosemes explicitly discussed by ancient sources.
Article note
The citations of Latin authors in this article follow the TLL Index librorum: https://thesaurus.badw.de/tll-digital/index/a.html.
Acknowledgements
I would like to thank Nicoletta Bruno for organizing an outstanding conference and for editing this contribution. I am also deeply grateful to René Nünlist and Charis Jo, whose comments have made numerous (innumerable?) improvements to this paper.
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Articles in the same Issue
- Titelseiten
- Introduction
- Part I Ancient Greek and Latin Lexicography
- Atticist Lexica and the Interpretation of Comic Language
- Second-Century CE Lexicography: Genre or a Literary Current of Language, Politics, and Social Dynamics?
- Considerations on Some Notable Words in a Latin Account of Payments from Tebtynis
- Lucus a non lucendo: Enantiosemy in Ancient Latin Lexicography
- Part II Greco-Latin Lexicography in Late Antiquity, the Middle Ages, and the Modern World
- Latin Grammarians as Lexicographers: The Treatment of Nouns with Uncertain Gender
- Claretus And the City: The Glossarius, Its Latin Neologisms and Its Reception in Municipal Administrative Texts
- A Distorted Lemma: Στεφάκης Ἀθηναῖος ἱερομόναχος and a False Biography of Nicholas of Methone
- Part III Lexicography and Classics: Uses, Perspectives, and Ongoing Projects
- Latin Lexicography and Textual Criticism: A Lexical Note on Valerius Flaccus, Argonautica 5.380
- An Ongoing Supplement to Traditional Dictionaries: WiP – Words in Progress and the Contribution of Greek Documentary Papyrology
- Why a Historical and Theological Lexicon of the Septuagint?
- Pluralist Perspectives in the Thesaurus Linguae Latinae
- List of Contributors
Articles in the same Issue
- Titelseiten
- Introduction
- Part I Ancient Greek and Latin Lexicography
- Atticist Lexica and the Interpretation of Comic Language
- Second-Century CE Lexicography: Genre or a Literary Current of Language, Politics, and Social Dynamics?
- Considerations on Some Notable Words in a Latin Account of Payments from Tebtynis
- Lucus a non lucendo: Enantiosemy in Ancient Latin Lexicography
- Part II Greco-Latin Lexicography in Late Antiquity, the Middle Ages, and the Modern World
- Latin Grammarians as Lexicographers: The Treatment of Nouns with Uncertain Gender
- Claretus And the City: The Glossarius, Its Latin Neologisms and Its Reception in Municipal Administrative Texts
- A Distorted Lemma: Στεφάκης Ἀθηναῖος ἱερομόναχος and a False Biography of Nicholas of Methone
- Part III Lexicography and Classics: Uses, Perspectives, and Ongoing Projects
- Latin Lexicography and Textual Criticism: A Lexical Note on Valerius Flaccus, Argonautica 5.380
- An Ongoing Supplement to Traditional Dictionaries: WiP – Words in Progress and the Contribution of Greek Documentary Papyrology
- Why a Historical and Theological Lexicon of the Septuagint?
- Pluralist Perspectives in the Thesaurus Linguae Latinae
- List of Contributors
