At 11:48 AM 12/15/00 -0500, you wrote:
>Dear Colleagues,
>
>Has any of you ever come across the (Latin) word "obripilatio"? I can't
>make head nor tail of it nor find it in OLD or or Niermeyer. It occurs in
>the context of a girl stricken suddenly with a seizure and afterward
>rendered hysterical. While working in the garden, she has just fallen to
>the ground:
>
>"Tum quoque, cum subita obripilatione, tremor membrorum continuus illi
>exstitit."
>
> I can provide more context if you like. My best guess is that the author
>has contructed it from "repello", so that it would connote being struck a
>blow, but it seems an awfully inflated word, and the spelling is bizarre.
>(This comes from a miracle collection from AASS, which in the volume I'm
>using is usually pretty careful to comment on, or to standardize, bizarre
>orthography.) Any ideas?
>
>Many thanks,
>
>Patrick Nugent.
>
Dear Mr. Nugent,
I agree that "repello" would not befit the context, since one would expect
such an action to be folowing with the girl as subject of the main clause.
Here is my guess:
Try the more common "obrepo" "to creep up on, to approach with suprise" :
by this "obrepilatione" would give the meaning "with it being suddenly
crept up" and is less forceful and more contextually appropriate I think.
"It" here would refer to the "tremor".
There remains the explanation of the form: one would expect "obreptione";
but I think the "-ilatione" [from latio, -onis] can be taken to render the
action passive instead of the former , e.g. cum subita obreptione ["with a
sudden creeping up"].
Sincerley in Christ,
Br. Alexis Bugnolo
The Franciscan Archive
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