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
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