dico

Dico (DEE-koh) is among the most heavily worked verbs in the Latin record: 29,784 occurrences across 364 works — a word at home almost everywhere Latin is written. It lives thickest in the prose of instruction and inquiry. The top surfaces are Institutio Oratoria ("Institutes of Oratory," 2,195), Noctes Atticae ("Attic Nights," 1,842), Naturalis Historia ("Natural History," 1,596), Ab urbe condita ("From the Founding of the City," 1,147), Controversiae ("Debates," 903), and De Oratore ("On the Orator," 898). Rhetoric, history, and natural science lean on it hardest — a verb of saying that the Romans who talked about talking could not do without.

The lexica record that the headword is really two words braided together. Lewis & Short (A Latin Dictionary, 1879) enters dĭco, -āvi, -ātum (first conjugation), glossed "to proclaim, make known" — the root of dedicate — and separately dīco, dixi, dictum (third conjugation), the ordinary verb "to say." Lewis & Short note the pair are "orig. the same word," comparing abdĭco and abdīco, indĭco and indīco. Walde–Hofmann (Lateinisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 1938–54) glosses the third-conjugation verb "spreche, spreche aus, verkündige" ("I speak, speak out, proclaim") and marks the old spelling deico with the diphthong ei.

Two etymology pointers are matched. Walde–Hofmann (entry #924) give the root candidates *di-, *deik-, *deig-, though the record lists no gloss for them. Ernout–Meillet (Dictionnaire étymologique de la langue latine, DELL, 1932; 4th ed. 1959, entry #3058) also treat the word; the record matches the pointer without listing their reconstruction.

The cited surfaces are all from Livy's first two books and show both verbs at once: dicitur ("it is said"), dixit ("he said"), beside dicata ("dedicated," feminine) and dicavit ("he dedicated"), as at Ab Urbe Condita book 1. Speaking and consecrating, one form apart.

When one word carries both to say and to set apart as holy, is the boundary between them a difference, or a memory?