Latin inter, like its Spanish descendant entre, meant ‘between,’ and Latin dicere, like its Spanish descendant decir, meant ‘to say, tell.’ The Romans put those two words together to create the verb interdicere, whose literal meaning was ‘to speak between.’ Lewis and Short’s Latin Dictionary explained that that meant ‘to interpose by speaking,’ and I may have to further “speak between” and explain by adding the example of someone who comes between two quarreling people and tells them to stop bickering. From situations like that, the Romans took to using their verb interdicere with the sense ‘to forbid, prohibit.’
From Latin interdictum, the past participle of interdicere, Spanish has entredicho, which is ‘a prohibition against saying or doing something.’ In particular, in the Catholic Church, an entredicho is ‘a decree that forbids a person from carrying out, or a place from being used for, an ecclesiastical function.’ In Catholic countries, if such a prohibition took place, people would naturally be inclined to believe that the prohibited person or place lacked legitimacy, so the phrase estar en entredicho took on the sense ‘to be in doubt.’ Quedar en entredicho is similar, and poner en entredicho means ‘to cast doubt on.’
The Old French equivalent of Spanish entredicho was entredit, which Middle English carried over as entrediten (whose -en was the infinitive ending that became less and less common in Middle English and died out in modern English). Entrediten meant ‘to prohibit ecclesiastically,’ but the verb, eventually restored to the Latin-like spelling interdict, has added the military sense ‘to intercept an enemy’s supply lines.’ An interdiction is ‘the condition or state of being interdicted.’
The original Latin infinitive interdicere became Spanish entredecir, a not-so-common verb that means ‘to issue an ecclesiastical interdiction.’ Another sense, now archaic, is ‘to forbid dealing with or speaking to a certain person.’ The even more Latin-like interdecir, also now seldom used, likewise means ‘to forbid.’
© 2011 Steven Schwartzman
Aug 23, 2011 @ 10:09:36
I was expecting to see the word ‘interdicto’ mentioned in your article, used instead of ‘entredicho’ for legal purposes in some countries. It is the Spanish equivalent of the forensic ‘injunction’. By the way, don’t know if you would have (or had) an article on ‘forense/forensic’. Regards,
Aug 23, 2011 @ 12:21:57
You’re right, I should have mentioned that. Thanks for doing it for me.
I haven’t yet written about forense/forensic, which has an interesting connection to more than just the Roman forum.