Theiling Online    Sitemap    Conlang Mailing List HQ   

Re: invicem

From:Ray Brown <ray.brown@...>
Date:Thursday, November 13, 2003, 6:09
On Wednesday, November 12, 2003, at 04:51 PM, Adam Walker wrote:

> I was translating a Latin Christmas song and came > across this wonderful word -- invicem. Does it > survive in any of the Romance languages? I can't find > it in any of my dictionaries of Spanish, French, > Catalan or Italian.
"invicem", although often written as one word, is really two "in uicem" and the latter word 'uice(m)' (nom. uicis), does survive: Italian: vece (place, stead) French: fois (time, occasion) Spanish: vez ( " , " ) Portuguese: vez ( " , " ) "invicem" survives in Italian 'invece' with the meaning of "in stead of", which is one meaning of the Classical Latin "in uicem". 'invicem' came to be written as a single word because it became a set phrase and in late Latin we find it treated as an indeclinable pronoun meaning "each other", which may be governed by a preposition, e.g. "ad inuicem", "ab inuicem", "in inuicem" and "pro inuicem" are all found in the Vulgate. One person used to finish his snail mails to me with: 'oremus pro invicem'
> If it doesen't survive, how do the modern Romances > express "by turns", "one by one" or "invicem"?
'one another', 'mutually' is a more common meaning in the post-Augustan period. But I leave the modern equivalents of the various meanings of 'inuicem' ~ 'in uicem' to our Romance speakers :) Ray =============================================== http://home.freeuk.com/ray.brown ray.brown@freeuk.com (home) raymond.brown@kingston-college.ac.uk (work) ===============================================

Reply

Adam Walker <carrajena@...>