The corpus record — Latin

demens

mad

Generated live from the audited Latin corpus — every figure on this page is a database query, not prose from memory.

Where it lives

Ordo Urbium Nobilium 1 · 9.56/10k
Panegyricus de tertio consulatu Honorii Augusti 1 · 7.24/10k
Octavia 3 · 5.73/10k
Antoninus Caracallus 1 · 4.9/10k
Panegyricus dictus Manlio Theodoro consuli 1 · 4.65/10k
De haruspicum responso in P. Clodium in Senatu Habita 3 · 3.99/10k
Pro M. Marcello 1 · 3.61/10k
Agamemnon 2 · 3.6/10k
Medea 2 · 3.53/10k
In Rufinum 2 · 3.49/10k
Oedipus 2 · 3.37/10k
Elegiae 4 · 3.24/10k

Densest 12 of 81 attested works shown, by occurrences per 10,000 attested tokens.

What it meant

1. demens — de Vaan

demens 'mad' (PL+), dementia 'madness5 (P1.+), dementire 'to lose one's mind' (Lucr.+), mentio 'mention* (Andr.+); mentm 'to lie' (P1.+), ementm 'to falsify, invent' (PL+). Pit. *mrtti-. PIE *mn-ti- [f.J 'thought, mind'. IE cognates: Skt. mati- [f.] 'thought, mind', Av. *maiti-, Lith. minus 'thought, idea', OCS pamqth 'memory, monument' < *mn-ti-; Go. ana-minds 'suspicion', Go. ga-minpi [n.] 'memory', OHG gi-munt … — [de Vaan, s.v. demens, p. 386]

2. dē-mens — Lewis & Short

dē-mens, entis,

I adj., out of one's mind or senses; mad, raving; foolish (cf. amens) (class. and very freq.; for syn. cf.: amens, excors, vecors, insanus, vesanus, delirus, alienatus mente): qua perturbatione animi quae, sanus cum esset, timebat ne evenirent, ea demens eventura esse dicebat, Cic. Div. 2, 55 fin.: summos viros desipere, delirare, dementes esse dicebas, id. N. D. 1, 34, 94 (for which, delirare et mente esse captum, id. Off. 1, 27, 94): ego te non vecordem, non furiosum, non mente captum, non tragico illo Oreste aut Athamante dementiorem putem, id. Pis. 20, 47; cf. Orestes, Hor. S. 2, 3, 133 and 135; 1, 6, 97; 1, 10, 74; id. Od. 1, 37, 7; Juv. 15, 1: Pentheus, Verg. A. 4, 469: in tranquillo tempestatem adversam optare dementis est, Cic. Off. 1, 24, 83; cf. id. Rep. 1, 1: quem fugis, ah, demens? Verg. E. 2, 60: non tacui demens, id. A. 2, 94 et saep.—

II Poet. transf., of inanimate subjects: manus, Tib. 1, 10, 56: somnia, Prop. 3, 8, 15 (4, 7, 15 M.): furor, id. 1, 13, 20: discordia, Verg. A. 6, 280: falx, id. ib. 3, 7: strepitus, Hor. Od. 3, 19, 23: cura alieni pericli, Val. Fl. 6, 474: cf. ratio, Nep. Paus. 3, 1: otium, Plin. 2, 23, 21, § 85.—Sup.: causa dementissimi consilii, Cic. Phil. 2, 22, 53; Auct. Harusp. resp. 26.—Adv.: dēmenter, foolishly, madly (rare): tanta res tam dementer credita, * Cic. Cat. 3, 9, 22; Ov. M. 4, 259: dementissime testabitur, Sen. Ben. 4, 27 fin.

In the wild

Demens Seneca the Elder, Excerpta Controversiae 2.3
demens Cicero, Philippicae 5.15
demens Horace, Satyrarum libri 2.3.133
dementer Apuleius, Metamorphoses 9.21
demens Propertius, Elegiae 3.3.15
demens Ovid, Amores 3.6.101

6 of 210 attestations shown.

Where it came from

de Vaan, Etymological Dictionary of Latin and the other Italic Languages (Brill 2008) Treated in de Vaan, Etymological Dictionary of Latin and the other Italic Languages (Brill 2008) s.v. demens (scan p. 386; entry #1028). Root candidates: *mrtti-, *maiti-, *mnti-.

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Latin text and lemmatization derived from the Perseus Digital Library (canonical-latinLit), CC BY-SA 4.0. Lewis & Short (public domain) via Perseus. This derived data is shared under the same CC BY-SA 4.0 license.