Ancient ‘etymology’ and Tibullus: on the classification of ‘etymologies’ and on ‘etymological markers’

Extract

Ancient ‘etymology’ is now such a well-established modern scholarly interest that a paper about it need no longer be prefaced by an account of its commonest forms or by a justification of its importance, especially in poetry – and that despite the pseudo-etymological nature of many ancient etymologies. For such matters it is sufficient to refer to what have already become the standard works on ancient etymologies and etymologising. If further explanation of the high intellectual status accorded by antiquity to etymologising seems necessary, it can be provided economically by reference to those ancient philosophical theories of language, e.g. that of the Stoics, which held that words are related to the reality (φύσις) of the things which they name, and to the close links which surviving ancient etymological treatises assert between etymology (i.e. derivations) and ‘semantics’ (i.e. meaning). The etymologies most familiar to older classical scholarship are those revolving around proper names; but even before the recent upsurge of interest in ancient etymology there was some awareness of the additional potential for common nouns, verbs and adjectives to be etymologised.