Re: invicem

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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