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Definition 2024

secum

secum

Latin

Adverb

sēcum

  1. with itself, with himself, with herself, with itself, with themselves
    Duxit secum virginem.
    He led the girl with himself.
    Pompeius a me petiit ut secum, et apud se quotidie essem.
    Pompeius requested me to be with him and at his house every day.
    Filium perduxere illuc secum, ut una esset, meum.
    They took my son along with them in their company thither.
    Amoenitates omnium Venerum atque cenustatum is secum adfert.
    He brings all kinds of pleasures with him.

Descendants

See also

References

  • secum in Charlton T. Lewis and Charles Short (1879) A Latin Dictionary, Oxford: Clarendon Press
  • secum in Charlton T. Lewis (1891) An Elementary Latin Dictionary, New York: Harper & Brothers
  • Félix Gaffiot (1934), “secum”, in Dictionnaire Illustré Latin-Français, Paris: Hachette.
  • Meissner, Carl; Auden, Henry William (1894) Latin Phrase-Book, London: Macmillan and Co.
    • (ambiguous) circumstances demand: tempus (ita) fert (not secum)
    • (ambiguous) to think over, consider a thing: secum (cum animo) reputare aliquid
    • (ambiguous) to think over, consider a thing: considerare in, cum animo, secum aliquid
    • (ambiguous) to contradict oneself, be inconsistent: secum pugnare (without sibi); sibi repugnare (of things)
    • (ambiguous) to live to oneself: secum vivere

Etymology

From Latin se (the ablative of sui) + cum ‎(“with”).

Two, not necessarily mutually exclusive explanations have been offered:

The first explanation was offered by Cicero, who believed that the normal word order of cum nobis "with us" would sound too much like cunno bis "twice in the ****", so the words were reversed. This reversal was then applied to cum vobis, cum me, cum te, and cum se.

A modern explanation is that the word ordering comes from the fact that in Proto-Indo-European the word *ḱóm (from which cum derives) was an adverb, not a preposition as it became in Latin. As such the *kom could appear before or after the object pronoun since it was the object of the verb, not the object of a preposition. As these special particles evolved into prepositions this word order became archaic even though it was still commonly used. Thus the contraction nobiscum (and mecum, etc.) evolved into an adverb in its own right.

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