🚀 go-pugleaf

On Sat, 11 Jan 2003 15:27:55 -0000, "CS" <coredon@clara.net>
wrote:

>I've come across a large number of Latin words for taxes, all with the same
>ending.
>For example, ancoragium, arivagium, barragium, pallagium...
>There are many others but these are good examples. Can anyone tell me about
>the -agium element of these words? What verb does
>it come from?

It has a roundabout history.  It comes from the late Latin suffix
<-�ticum>, used especially to form collective nouns and abstract
nouns of appurtenance, originally the neuter of adjectives in
<-�ticus>.  In Old French it developed into <-age>.  For
instance, modern French <sauvage> is from Old French <salvage>
'savage, wild', from Latin <silv�ticus> 'of the wood'.
Similarly, in Italian it developed into <-aggio>.  The Old French
suffix became productive in Old French -- that is, it was used to
form new words, like <entourage>, that were not themselves
descended from Latin words in <-�ticum> -- and was borrowed back
into medieval Latin in the form <-�gium>.  Many medieval Latin
technical terms were actually Latinizations of vernacular terms,
and that seems to be the cases with this elaborate tax
nomenclature.

Brian

"CS" <coredon@clara.net> wrote in message
news:1042298907.52011.0@iapetus.uk.clara.net...
> I've come across a large number of Latin words for taxes, all with the
same
> ending.
> For example, ancoragium, arivagium, barragium, pallagium...
> There are many others but these are good examples. Can anyone tell me
about
> the -agium element of these words? What verb does
> it come from?
> Chris

In Classical Latin you have words like pelagium (pelagius, a, um) a neuter
adjective meaning "of , pertaining, or like the sea"  from the Greek
'pelagios,' which are distinct from nouns ending in -agium (adagium,
aquagium, plagium, contagium) in which   -agium is the contraction of 'agi'
the verbal particle derived, if I remember correctly,  from "agere" -- to
do, drive; and 'um' the typical neuter ending.

Additionally, later in France the -atium ending was corrupted to -agium
first and later to -age.  Like in hominaticum (Low Latin), hommagium
(medieval Latin), hommage (Old French).