Etymology
Per the LIV and IEW, from Proto-Indo-European *snewbʰ- (“to marry, to wed”), cognate to Proto-Slavic *snubìti.[1][2] Ernout and Meillet dispute this and instead connect this word with nūbēs (“cloud”), from PIE *(s)newdʰ- (“to cover”)[3] (the sense development would be "to cover" > "to take the veil" > "to get married"). De Vaan finds Ernout and Meillet's proposal semantically attractive, but morphologically difficult: if the root originally ended in *dʰ, then the attested supine stem must be a recent (re)formation, since an old supine form would have regularly developed -ss-, as in iussus (perfect participle of iubeō) from *Hyewdʰ-.[4]
The vowel in the first syllable of the supine stem is marked long by Lewis (1891) and Bennett (1907),[5] but De Vaan (2008) implies that it is short by omitting a macron, Ernout and Meillet explicitly mark it with a breve (nŭptum),[3] and Wartburg (1928–2002) and Bienvenu (1965) mark ŭ as short in the derived word nuptiae.[6][7] A short vowel in the supine stem would match the ablaut-based length alternation pattern seen in dūcō, dūxī, ductum (with a supine/past participle stem built on the zero grade of the root). On the other hand, a long vowel could have been introduced by analogy with the present stem, perfect stem, or both (as in scrībō, scrīpsī, scrīptum).
Possibly cognate with Ancient Greek νύμφη (númphē, “bride, young wife, nymph”) (English nymph), but this is disputed.
Verb
nūbō (present infinitive nūbere, perfect active nūpsī, supine nū̆ptum); third conjugation
- (intransitive, of a woman) to get married to, marry, wed [with dative ‘a man’]
- Synonym: innūbō
8 CE,
Ovid,
Fasti 5.489–490:
- Hāc quoque dē causā, sī tē prōverbia tangunt,
mēnse malum Maiō nūbere volgus ait.- For this reason, too, if proverbs interest you: [It is] a misfortune to marry in the month of May, the common folk say.
(See: Lemuria (festival).)
- (intransitive, of plants) to become joined, tied or wedded to
- (transitive, rare) to cover, veil
- Synonyms: vēlō, dissimulō, occultō, indūcō, operiō, obnūbō, occulō, condō, recondō, verrō, obruō, adoperiō, tegō, abscondō, abdō, cooperiō, premō, opprimō, comprimō, obvolvō, prōtegō, mergō
- Antonyms: adaperiō, aperiō, patefaciō
Conjugation
More information Conjugation of nūbō (third conjugation), indicative ...
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References
De Vaan, Michiel (2008) “nūbō”, in Etymological Dictionary of Latin and the other Italic Languages (Leiden Indo-European Etymological Dictionary Series; 7), Leiden, Boston: Brill, →ISBN, page 417 Charles E. Bennett (1907) “Hidden Quantity”, in The Latin Language – a historical outline of its sounds, inflections, and syntax, Boston: Allyn and Bacon, page 70
Further reading
- “nubo”, in Charlton T. Lewis and Charles Short (1879) A Latin Dictionary, Oxford: Clarendon Press
- “nubo”, in Charlton T. Lewis (1891) An Elementary Latin Dictionary, New York: Harper & Brothers
- nubo in Gaffiot, Félix (1934) Dictionnaire illustré latin-français, Hachette.
- Carl Meißner, Henry William Auden (1894) Latin Phrase-Book, London: Macmillan and Co.
- to marry (of the woman): nubere alicui
- (ambiguous) to give one's daughter in marriage to some-one: filiam alicui nuptum dare
