From the Latin sitting verb sĕdēre, another verb was
derived by means of the prefix ob‑
that means ‘towards’ or ‘against’, depending on the context. The verb was obsĭdēre, which literally meant ‘to sit
opposite to’ and whose principal parts were obsĭdĕo,
obsĭdēre, obsēdi, and obsĕssus.
In this case too, the allomorph of the sĕd‑
root in the first two principal parts was ‑sĭd‑,
as you can see. In the two other principal parts, the vowel was either ‑ē‑
or ‑ĕ‑, just like in the base verb sĕdēre. In poetry, this verb
was used with the meaning ‘to sit, stay, remain, abide anywhere’ but, most
importantly, in the context of war it had the meaning ‘to hem in, beset,
besiege, blockade’ (CTL).
The prefix ob‑ was
also added at some point to sĕdēre’s
companion verb sīdĕre,
resulting in the verb obsīdĕre,
found mostly in poetry, that also meant ‘to beset, besiege, blockade’ and ‘to
occupy, take possession of’ (L&S) and thus could be a synonym of obsĭdēre. The only two attested
principal parts of this verb are obsīdō
and obsīdĕre.
Finally, we should mention that there is a related deponent
verb obsĭdĭāri ‘to lie in wait for,
to waylay’ (principal parts: obsĭdĭor,
obsĭdĭāri). A deponent verb is one
that has passive forms but active meanings (cf. Part I, Chapter 8,
§8.4.3.4).
This verb is not attested until fairly late, in the post-Augustan period.
From the verb obsĭdēre,
Latin derived two synonymous nouns: obsĭdĭum and obsĭdĭo, both of which meant ‘siege, blockade’. It isn’t clear
what the difference in meaning between the two was, if any, or whether they
were used at different times or in different places. We saw the first of these words
when we saw that Sp. asedio, one of the two words for
‘siege’, is said to derive from the noun obsĭdĭum
(ob‑sĭd‑ĭum).
Presumably asedio was a
patrimonial word, given the ĭ to e sound change, but the change in
the prefix’s vowel from o to a is not at all common. This Latin noun
was derived from the present stem of the verb, ob‑sĭd‑ and the suffix ‑ĭ‑um, used at one time form abstract
nouns.
Regarding the word obsĭdĭo, its genitive wordform was obsĭdĭōnis and thus its regular stem was ob‑sĭd‑ĭōn‑. The derivational ending of this
word looks just like the suffix ‑ĭōn‑
that we have seen so often that derives third-declension abstract nouns from
verbs (‑ĭo in the nominative case), but there is a major
difference. In this case, this suffix attaches itself not to the passive
participle (supine) stem of the verb, obsĕss‑,
but rather to the present stem, in this case obsĭd‑. There are very few examples of abstract nouns
derived by means of this suffix from the present stem of a verb. Two of them
are lĕgĭo-lĕgĭōnis ‘legion’ and rĕgĭo-rĕgĭōnis ‘region’.[1]
However, as we will see below, there is also a noun that is
derived from the passive participle stem by means of the suffix ‑ĭōn‑, namely obsĕssĭo (gen. obsĕssĭōnis;
regular stem: ob‑sĕss‑ĭōn‑). No
doubt, you will recognize the cognates Eng. obsession
~ Sp. obsesión as coming from that
derived noun. But before turning to Eng. obsession
~ Sp. obsesión, let us mention that
English did borrow at one point, in the middle of the 15th century, the noun obsidion ‘siege’, through French, where it was a
learned loanword from Latin obsĭdĭo-obsĭdĭōnis. Its use was rare even then and the
word is now obsolete.
In addition
to the noun obsidion, English also borrowed from French
an adjective derived from the noun. The English adjective was obsidional
‘pertaining to a siege’, borrowed in the 16th century from French obsidional, itself borrowed in the 15th
century from Lat. obsĭdĭōnālis, an adjective derived by means of the third declension
adjectival suffix ‑āl‑ (ob‑sĭd‑ĭōn‑āl‑is). There is even a synonym of obsidional that was created in English
in the late 19th century, namely obsidionary, formed from obsidion and the Latinate suffix ‑ary that we saw in the previous section.
There is
another, related adjective in English, namely obsidious ‘besieging; besetting’. According to the OED, this adjective
was created in the early 17th century, in English, out of the Latin noun obsĭdĭum that gave us Sp. asedio by the addition of the Latinate
suffix ‑ous (from Lat. ‑ōs‑) that formed first/second declension adjectives
from nouns. Few English dictionaries mention this adjective and the few that do
mention that it is rare. However, for some reason, just as in the case of the
other English words containing the same stem, none of dictionaries says this
word is either archaic or obsolete.
Although the word obsidion
and its relatives will not be familiar to most speakers of English, they will
probably remind many speakers of a much more common word, namely obsidian,
which refers to ‘a hard, dark, glass-like volcanic rock formed by the rapid
solidification of lava without crystallization’ (COED). (Every time I type the
word obsidion, Word replaces it with
the word obsidian.) There is no
connection between the two words, however. Eng. obsidian (Sp. obsidiana)
is a 17th century loanword from Latin, but its form, what makes it look like
the noun obsidion, is actually due to
a a misreading that a copyist made at some point when transcribing the Latin
word into Latin. The actual, original Latin word was obsĭānus, not obsĭdĭānus,
an adjective derived from Obsĭus,
a Roman surname and, according to Pliny the Elder, the name of the person who
first discovered or described this type of stone in Ethiopia (Obsĭ‑us +‑ān‑
→ obsĭ‑ān‑us).[2]
Let us return now to the cognates Eng. obsession [əb.ˈsɛ.ʃən] ~ Sp. obsesión [ob.se.ˈsi̯on]. These words are
loanwords ultimately from Lat. obsessĭo,
a noun derived from the stem obsess‑
of the passive participle obsessus of
the verb obsĭdēre by means of the
noun-forming suffix ‑ĭōn‑ (genitive case: obsessĭōnis; regular stem: ob‑sess‑ĭōn‑). Curiously, in Latin this
word was a synonym of obsĭdĭo-obsĭdĭōnis and obsĭdĭum, and thus meant ‘siege, blockade’. That was also the meaning the
word obsession had when this word was
borrowed into English in the early 16th century from French, which itself had
borrowed it from Latin in the 15th century. However, by 1590, the French word
had come to mean ‘state or condition of someone besieged by a demon’, a
preliminary stage to demonic possession, but without the demon actually
inhabiting the body. That meaning was transferred to the English cognate soon
thereafter.
To understand the original meaning of Lat. obsessĭo, and its companion possessĭo, it
helps to understand how these words were
used in Roman military terminology. In Roman warfare, there were two stages of
taking over an enemy city. The first one was obsession (obsĭdēre, obsessĭo), the siege, and the second one
possession, or taking it over by
force after the walls have been breached. In the next section we will explore the
word possession and the verb possĭdēre that this noun is derived from,
since these words, which are actually compounds, are also derived from the verb
sĕdēre and also contains
the root sĕd‑.[i]
The words obsession
and possession are used in Christian terminology
to refer to supposed demonic influences on people but, obviolsy, they are mere analogues
of the Roman war terms we just saw. In obsession, a demon besieges a person and
in possession the demon takes over the person. By the late 17th century the
word obsession was being used in
non-religious contexts to refer to anything that absorbs a person’s mind. In
Modern English, the word obsession has
lost the military and religious senses and can be defined as ‘an extreme
unhealthy interest in something or worry about something, which stops you from
thinking about anything else’ (DOCE) or, with more of a psychological twist, as
a ‘compulsive preoccupation with a fixed idea or an unwanted feeling or
emotion, often accompanied by symptoms of anxiety’ (AHD).
Sp. obsesión first
appeared in the DRAE’s 1780 edition of the DRAE. It is obviously a loanword, which
probably came into the language through French, just like its English cognate
did, not directly from Latin. The borrowing probably took place after the
meaning had already changed to its current one in the late 17th century, for
there is no sign that the Spanish word obsesión
ever meant anything other than what it means today, which is also exactly what
it means in Modern French and Modern English.
These cognates that come from Lat. obsessĭo have a more technical use in the field of psychology and
psychiatry in the modern languages, one which can be defined as follows:
An obsession is the inability of a person to stop thinking about a particular topic or feeling a certain emotion without a high amount of anxiety. When obsessed, an individual continues the obsession in order to avoid the consequent anxiety. In the case of obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD), the individual may have only the obsessions, compulsions or both. An example of an obsession in OCD is a person who can't stop thinking about dirt or germs that they could come into contact with. In this case, thinking about the dirt and/or germs is the obsession.[ii]
English synonyms of the word obsession are preoccupation,
fixation, compulsion, and mania.
Spanish synonyms of obsesión are manía, fijación, and obcecación.
The first two are cognates of Eng. mania
and fixation, respectively. In Spanish
colloquial speech, perra and neura are common synonyms, at least in
some dialects (Clave).
Both English and Spanish have words related to or even
derived from the nouns Eng. obsession
~ Sp. obsesión. One pair of words that
the two languages have in common are the cognate adjectives Eng. obsessive
[əb.ˈsɛ.sɪv] ~ Sp. obsesivo/a [ob.se.ˈsi.βo]. The word *obsessīvus
did not exist in Latin, though it could have existed, since it is properly formed
by the addition of the first-second conjugation adjectival suffix ‑īv‑
to perfect passive participial stems of verbs. But we know that these
adjectives were created in the field of psychology in the early 20th century, in
one of the modern languages and then copied in the others, out of the stem obsess‑ of the word obsession and the Latinate suffix Eng. ‑ive (in French, it is masc. ‑if,
fem. ‑ive; in Spanish,‑ivo/a). Its main meaning is ‘of,
relating to, characteristic of, or causing an obsession’ (AHD). From this
adjective, English has derived the adverb obsessively (Sp. obsesivamente)
by the addition of the native (Germanic) suffix ‑ly and the noun obsessiveness, by the addition of
the native suffix ‑ness (there is no
Spanish equivalent for this latter word, though *obsesividad would be a likely candidate).
Let us look now at the verbs related to these nouns. English
has borrowed the Latin verb obsĭdēre not
once but twice. A failed attempt was the borrowing as by some author in the
late 17th century of this verb as obside,
with the meaning ‘to beset, invest, surround, encompass’ (OED). Needless to
say, the verb is now obsolete. But before that failed attempt, English had
already borrowed the same verb in the early 16th century, from the usual
source, namely the verb’s passive participle, the verb form obsessus, resulting in the verb obsess. When the verb was first borrowed
it had the expected meaning, namely ‘to besiege a fortress’. By the mid-16th
century the verb had already acquired the sense of a demon besieging a person,
much like the noun obsession had
changed meanings. By the 17th century, the past participle of this verb, obsessed, had already become an
adjective with the meaning ‘haunted, tormented by an evil spirit’. Then, in the
20th century, the verb acquired its modern transitive and intransitive meanings
related to being constantly preoccupied with something.
Dictionaries tell us that the verb obsess has a transitive meaning, ‘to preoccupy the mind of
excessively’, and an intransitive one, derived from the former, ‘to have the
mind excessively preoccupied with a single emotion or topic’ (AHD). The latter
is indeed a use of the verb obsess,
as in as in She always obsesses about her
hair, though this use is rare. But English obsess is not really used transitively anymore and what
dictionaries term as the passive use of the transitive verb (be/become/get obsessed by) is really an
adjectival use of obsessed, the past
participle of the verb, not a true passive participle, as shown by the fact that
the source of the obsession is typically coded with a with-phrase and not a by-phrase,
as in She is obsessed with her hair. Note
that the transitive sentence Her hair obsesses
her sounds a bit odd and is of dubious grammaticality.
The equivalent of Eng. obsess
in French is obséder, which was
borrowed and adapted from Lat. obsĭdēre.
Spanish, on the other hand, never borrowed this Latin verb. Instead, it created
a verb obsesionar out of the noun obsession (obsesion‑ar). The verb was created by some unknown author sometime in
the second half of the 19th century, but it did not appear in a dictionary
until 1917, and in the DRAE until 1927, after which time it becomes very common
in the language.
Spanish obsesionar
is equivalent to transitive English obsess,
meaning something like ‘to cause an obsession’. The difference is that this verb is indeed used as a transitive verb,
as in Lo obsesiona el fútbol (or El fútbol lo obsesiona) ‘He’s obsessed with
soccer’. As usual, this transitive verb
can be used ‘pronominally’ (reflexively), as obsesionarse (por/con), which translates as to get obsessed (by/with/about), as in Se obsesiona por/con cualquier cosa ‘He becomes obsessed with just about
anything’. Spanish also uses the past participle of this verb, obsesionado/a, as an adjective in constructions
such as estar obsesionado/a (con), as
in Está obsesionada con salir a comer
‘She’s obsessed about going out to eat’.
[1] Lat. lĕgĭo-lĕgĭōnis ‘legion’
is derived from the present verb lĕgĕre ‘to choose; to collect; to read’ (lĕgō, lĕgĕre, lēgī,
lēctus); and (2) rĕgĭo-rĕgĭōnis ‘direction; boundary; region’, from the verb rĕgĕre ‘to keep/lead straight; to guide, direct’ (regō, regĕre, rēxī, rēctus). Other such nouns are căpĭo ‘a taking’, contāgĭo
‘a touching’, īnflectĭo ‘a bending; inflection’, rĕlĭgĭo ‘sense of right, moral obligation, duty; sense of religious
obligation, religious sanction, duty to the gods; etc.’ (CTL), suspīcĭo ‘mistrust, distrust, suspicion’,
and ūnĭo ‘oneness, unity, union’.
[2] Pliny the Elder (23-79 CE), whose Roman name
was Gaius Plinius Secundus, wrote about this in his famous Naturalis Historia (Natural History), the first encyclopedia ever
written. In this book he mentioned that “Among the various kinds of glass, we
may also reckon Obsian glass, a substance very similar to the stone which
Obsius discovered in Æthiopia. The stone is of a very dark colour, and
sometimes transparent; but it is dull to the sight,…” (Chapter 67: “Obsian
glass and obsian stone”).
[i] Source: Obsession : a history, by Lennard J
Davis. Chicago, Ill. : University of Chicago Press, 2009.
[ii] Source: AlleyDog.com,
Psychology students’ best friend https://www.alleydog.com/glossary/definition.php?term=obsession
(accessed: 2018.01.06)
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