# Iugiter as "immediately" or "instantly"?



## Michael Zwingli

Hey, guys.
Can any of you find an instance in which _iugiter_ may be translated as "immediately", or "instantly"? If you can, please provide me with a reference. Thanks.


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## Starless74

My reference is Latin-Italian, it mentions the meaning you're looking for: → iūgĭtĕr (No. 2)
whereas the Latin-English section of the same site doesn't.


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## Scholiast

saluete amici!

_iugiter_ is a rare, but classically attested (Seneca, Apuleius), adverb meaning not 'immediately' or 'instantly', rather 'continuously', 'without intermission' (related to the root _iug_- as in _iugum_, 'yoke'), so 'joined up'.

Σ


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## Michael Zwingli

Scholiast said:


> ..._iugiter_ is a rare, but classically attested (Seneca, Apuleius), adverb meaning not 'immediately' or 'instantly', rather 'continuously', 'without intermission'...


Yes, Scholiast, that's what I thought as well, but I recently have been made to understand that it has taken the meanings "immediately" and "instantly" somewhere in the Latin corpus. Starless' reference seems to confirm this:


Starless74 said:


> My reference is Latin-Italian, it mentions the meaning you're looking for: → iūgĭtĕr (No. 2), whereas the Latin-English section of the same site doesn't


I wonder if there are any search tools that one can employ to find examples of a given Latin lemma applied to a particular semantic field. I must admit, that I cannot understand how an adverb derived from _ iūgis_, which has the meanings: (ceaseless, continual, perpetual; endless, everlasting) can take on a meaning from an altogether different, and seemingly contradictory (at least to endless and everlasting), semantic field as is represented by  "immediately" and "instantly". Gadzooks! This is a job for SuperAhvalj! (Perhaps, at least, he can sine a bit of light in this darkness.) I would also like to find examples wthin the corpus of _iūgis_ taking the sense of "immediately" and "instantly". I have seen within two sources now, that it can do so, so the references must exist, surely...perhaps in Late or Medieval Latin, something like Petrarch, perhaps???
BTW, Scholiast, I think that your suggestion about the derivation of _iūgis_ and so_ iūgiter_, that:


Scholiast said:


> (related to the root _iug_- as in _iugum_, 'yoke'), so 'joined up'.


_iugum_ from the IE _yugóm_ ...is no longer generally accepted, but rather the new thinking is that _iūgis _is believed to derive from the IE collocation _h₂yu-gʷih₃_ (“long life”) , read Weiss' excellent treatment here: http://conf.ling.cornell.edu/weiss/Weiss_1994_Life_everlasting.pdf


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## Starless74

Interestingly enough, even my huge paper Latin-Italian dictionary (one of the most authoritative in my day, with lots of direct quotes for each entry)
only cites poet Ausonius using _iūgĭtĕr_ as "immediately", with no specification as to where he used it.


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## exgerman

Starless74 said:


> Interestingly enough, even my huge paper Latin-Italian dictionary (one of the most authoritative in my day, with lots of direct quotes for each entry)
> only cites poet Ausonius using _iūgĭtĕr_ as "immediately", with no specification as to where he used it.


That's why we have google. _Parentalia _19.6;  _Commemoratio professorum Burdigalensium _15.14


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## Starless74

exgerman said:


> That's why we have google. _Parentalia _19.6; _Commemoratio professorum Burdigalensium _15.14


Thanks, exgerman.
there may be a restriction in some Countries, because I can't see any ebook text at the page you linked. 

Anyway, on this page → _Commemoratio professorum Burdigalensium_  ("concordances")
I could browse the two occurrences of the adverb _iugiter_ in Ausonius' text
neither of which seems to be used with the "unusual" meaning the OP asked about ("immediately" instead of "continuously")
So, as for both Ausonius and _iugiter_, I guess I'm back to square one.


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## bearded

In my view, _joined up/without intermission _and_ immediately _do not really exclude each other:
something happens continuously, without intermission>without anything in the meantime>immediately.
From the original ''joined up'' to ''immediately'' the transition looks rather easy.


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## Michael Zwingli

bearded said:


> In my view, _joined up/without intermission _and_ immediately _do not really exclude each other:
> something happens continuously, without intermission>without anything in the meantime>immediately. From the original ''joined up'' to ''immediately'' the transition looks rather easy.


Yes, I can appreciate your reasoning... I guess what bothers me about it isn't the jump from "continuously" (_iugiter_) to "immediately" (_iugiter_), as much as the jump from "to live for a long time"  (_h₂yu-gʷih₃_), which expresses a temporally long, eternal/durative aspect, to "immediately" (_iugiter_), which expresses a temporally short, instantaneous, aspect. That is, perhaps, an example of my "comparing apples to oranges", though.


Starless74 said:


> Interestingly enough, even my huge paper Latin-Italian dictionary (one of the most authoritative in my day, with lots of direct quotes for each entry) only cites poet Ausonius using _iūgĭtĕr_ as "immediately", with no specification as to where he used it.





exgerman said:


> That's why we have google. _Parentalia _19.6;  _Commemoratio professorum Burdigalensium _15.14


Thanks, for that, guys! I wanted to verify that as an appropriate sense of the term, through use in the Latin corpus. If any more instances crop up, please post a reference here... Ausonius is a Late Latin reference. If anyone can think of a classical reference for this usage of _iugiter_, please post that. Thanks.


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## Scholiast

amici omnes, saluete

Michael's persuasive statement (in # 4, with the citation from Weiss' brilliant article, which I had never known of, never mind read), made me think again, of course.

Now I think I can claim to know classical Latin prose and poetry pretty well, and sometimes to have been helpful to others in this Forum. But I am no historical philologist (yes, we need the magician Ahjlavi from St Petersburg here). The distinction ought at once to have been clear from the variant lengths of the stems, _iūg-_ and _iŭg-_.

A subversive question now arises: given the likelihood of dialectical variants in different parts of the Latin _Sprachraum_, and that Latin itself is naturally a stress-based rather than a quantity-based language, may there not have been already in antiquity some confusion between the stems and their meanings?

Σ

Oops! Cross-posted with Michael Zwingli's # 7.


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## Michael Zwingli

Scholiast said:


> ...with the citation from Weiss' brilliant article, which I had never known of, never mind read), made me think again, of course.


I'm happy that you enjoyed that read. I thought the paper quite convincing and well-argued.


Scholiast said:


> A subversive question now arises: given the likelihood of dialectical variants in different parts of the Latin _Sprachraum_, and that Latin itself is naturally a stress-based rather than a quantity-based language, may there not have been already in antiquity some confusion between the stems and their meanings?


Ah! You have asked the salient question. Any confusion which existed by the time of Early Latin, and certainly by the Classical period, however, might be based on a semantic connection already lost by that time ( and, perhaps lost even by the time of Proto-Italic?).  Certainly, Latin  _iugum_, and its antecedent, IE  _yugóm_, both suggest, in addition to "a joining" of beasts of burden, "a continuity" between the yoked beasts. _Yugóm _is from the perfective IE root _yewg-_ ("to join, to yoke, to tie together"). Rix, however, has suggested (1976) the reconstructed form _hyugóm _(with laryngeal), which if true, would seem would make the IE root thereof: _hyewg-._ The extended root form of the first element of _h₂yu-gʷih₃,_  h₂eyu-/ h₂óyu-, is indeed: h₂yew-.  Of course _-óm_ (Latin _-um_)is the neuter ( and, so, presumably nominalizing) suffix in the IE tradition.  All this leads one to regard with suspicion, a possible semantic connection between  _h₂yu-gʷih₃_ on the one hand, and the noun _hyugóm _(_yugóm_) on the other.
Sorry to have waxed so 'linguistically theoretical' here in the Latin forum, but the natural course of the conversation seems to have led to it.


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## Dib

It is interesting that Sanskrit "yugá-" (n.s. yugám) has both meanings: a yoke or a team of beasts of burden as well as a long span of time (Hindu mythology, for example, divides every world creation-destruction cycle into four yugas.). I wouldn't expect the second meaning to derive from "_h₂yu-gʷih₃_" which would have produced "yujī-" by the Indo-Iranian or second palatalization. It probably does not shed any light on the etymology of the Latin word, but intersting to note the similar yet different states of affair in the two languages.


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