gnatus

Latin

Etymology

From Proto-Italic *gnātos (“born; son”), from Proto-Indo-European *ǵn̥h₁tós (“produced, given birth”), from *ǵenh₁- (“to produce, give birth, beget”). When used as a verb form, it functions as the perfect active participle of the deponent verb nāscor (“to be born”). The form *gnātos must have previously also served as the perfect passive participle of the transitive verb gignō (“to bear; to beget; to engender”), whose attested perfect passive participle genitus is a relatively recent replacement built by analogy to the stem of the perfect genuī. Continued association with the latter verb, and with other related words where initial /g/ was regularly retained due to a following vowel, such as genus (“birth, origin, lineage, descent”), could be part of the reason a spelling with gn- was used for this word for some time after regular sound change had generally replaced initial *gn- in Latin with n-. Another influence on the spelling could have been the medial -gn- found in related prefixed words such prōgnātus, cognātus. Alternatively, Köhm 1905 suggests that the relatively frequent occurrence of the noun after a possessive pronoun could have caused gn to be retained just as it was in word-internal position.

Pronunciation

• (Classical) IPA^(key): /ˈɡnaː.tus/,
• (modern Italianate Ecclesiastical) IPA^(key): /ˈɲa.tus/,

Noun

gnātus m (genitive gnātī, feminine gnāta); second declension

1. (chiefly poetic) Archaic form of nātus (“son”).

   Synonym: fīlius

   • Horatius, Sermones 2.5.30-31 (c. 35 BC, tr. H. Fairclough):

     ... fama civem causaque priorem / sperne, domi si gnatus erit fecundave coniux.

     ... spurn the citizen of the better name and cause / if he have a son at home or a fruitful wife.

Declension

Second-declension noun.

Participle

gnātus (feminine gnāta, neuter gnātum); first/second-declension participle

1. Archaic form of nātus.
   1. born
      • c. 200 BCE, Plautus, Menaechmi 959:

        Nam equidem, postquam gnatus sum, numquam aegrotavi unum diem, neque ego insanio neque pugnas neque ego litis coepio.

        • 1912 translation by Henry Thomas Riley

          Why, in fact, since I was born, I have never for a single day been ill. I'm neither mad, nor do I commence strifes or quarrels.

      • c. 186 BCE, Plautus, Aulularia 231:

        Venit hoc mihi, Megadore, in mentem, ted esse hominem divitem,
        factiosum, me autem esse hominem pauperum pauperrimum;
        nunc si filiam locassim meam tibi, in mentem venit
        te bovem esse et me esse asellum: ubi tecum coniunctus siem,
        ubi onus nequeam ferre pariter, iaceam ego asinus in luto,
        tu me bos magis haud respicias, gnatus quasi numquam siem.

        • 1916 translation by Paul Nixon

          Now here's the way it strikes me, Megadorus,—you're a rich man, a man of position: but as for me, I'm poor, awfully poor, dreadfully poor. Now if I was to marry off my daughter to you, it strikes me you'd be the ox and I'd be the donkey. When I was hitched up with you and couldn't pull my share of the load, down I'd drop, I, the donkey, in the mud; and you, the ox, wouldn't pay any more attention to me than if I'd never been born at all.

   2. (used with the noun genere, ablative of genus (“lineage, descent, stock”)) descended from, born to
      • c. 200 BCE – 190 BCE, Plautus, Captivi 319:

        Ego patri meo esse fateor summas divitias domi
        meque summo genere gnatum

        • 1912 translation by Henry Thomas Riley

          I confess that my father has very great wealth at home, and that I am born of a very noble family

   3. (used with a phrase expressing age) aged (having the age of); -old
      • c. 206 BCE – 188 BCE, Plautus, Mercator 1017:

        Annos gnatus sexaginta qui erit, si quem scibimus
        si maritum sive hercle adeo caelibem scortarier
        cum eo nos hac lege agemus

        • 2011 translation by Wolfgang de Melo

          If we find out that any sixty-year-old, married or unmarried, whores around, we shall deal with him according to the following law

Declension

First/second-declension adjective.

Usage notes

The noun ("son") is fairly consistently spelled with gn- in the comedies of Plautus and Terence, while the verbal participle ("born") is often spelled with n- already in these authors. In later authors such as Virgil, the use of the spelling gn- is a definite archaism.

References

Further reading

• “gnatus”, in Charlton T. Lewis and Charles Short (1879) A Latin Dictionary, Oxford: Clarendon Press
• “gnatus”, in Charlton T. Lewis (1891) An Elementary Latin Dictionary, New York: Harper & Brothers
• gnatus in Charles du Fresne du Cange’s Glossarium Mediæ et Infimæ Latinitatis (augmented edition with additions by D. P. Carpenterius, Adelungius and others, edited by Léopold Favre, 1883–1887)
• gnatus in Gaffiot, Félix (1934) Dictionnaire illustré latin-français, Hachette.