Open AccessUna palabra difícil: lat. <i>exīlis</i>
Author(s) -
Emilio Nieto Ballester
Publication year - 1987
Publication title -
emérita/emerita
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.116
H-Index - 4
eISSN - 1988-8384
pISSN - 0013-6662
DOI - 10.3989/emerita.1987.v55.i2.628
Subject(s) - art , humanities , philosophy
The origin and early meaning of Latin exīlis-e have not yet received a convincing explantion. It is suggested in this paper that in exīlis-e -owing to the fact that the traditional view which relates it with exiguus can hardly be accepted- it is possible to recognize an ancient rural and augural word *ekssu (e) idslis, strongly related with lat. sidus, 'star', resulting of the IE root *su (e) id-, 'shine, blaze'. The laicization of its early meaning 'away from the star's fortune' i.e. 'being out of luck' would have caused a semantic transfer to 'weak, thin, littel'. Many latin and romance parallel cases prove the possibility of this hypothesis