Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-fscjk Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-22T12:21:03.920Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Latin amata, amita

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  13 February 2009

A. C. Moorhouse
Affiliation:
University College, Swansea

Abstract

Image of the first page of this content. For PDF version, please use the ‘Save PDF’ preceeding this image.'
Type
Review Article
Copyright
Copyright © The Classical Association 1951

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

page 1 note 1 It is unnecessary to examine more closely the interpretations of amata as *ad(e)māta, *a(d)māta: *ad-, or as *ἀδαμάτα (ἀδάματος) ‘unwedded’. capio can be taken as a specialization of the sense ‘choose’, which was applied particularly to religious initiation or induction (and not only to the female sex, as Gellius noticed).

page 1 note 2 Unless, as does not seem very likely, ‘beloved by Vesta’ is intended.

page 1 note 3 So first by Bréal in M.S.L. ix. 165, and most recently in Schrader–Nehring, Real-lexikon der indg. Altertumskunde 2, i. 332. The usual explanation of Latin amo derives it from an affectionate, child's word *ama (see Walde—Hofmann). Sanskrit amā is connected by Wackernagel (Mélanges Saussure, 149) with *emos ‘mine’, so that amā would equal ‘chez moi’.

page 2 note 1 Walde–ofmann connects amita with the child's word *ama which is the supposed base of amo. So too Walde–okorny, i. 53; also Schrader-Nehring, ii. 86 (in opposition to the view expressed at i. 332). A connexion between amata and amita is supported by the view of Dion. Hal. i. 64. 2 that Amita is an older form of the name Amata (based on Varro, suggests Rossbach, P.W. i. 1751).

page 2 note 2 See Risch, , Wortbildung der homerischm Sprache, 28 ff.Google Scholar; Chantraine, Formation des Noms en grec ancien, 310.

page 2 note 3 It is, of course, a derivative of γάμος and not of the verb γαμέω, which would have given the form *γαμητή.