Ricerc@Sapienza

This paper is an essay in micro-historical semantics and concerns the Late Latin verb charaxāre, a loanword from Gr. χαράξαι, χαράσσω. The scientific literature uses to separate two different semantic values of this Latin verb: ‘to carve; to cut’ and ‘to write’. In Herren’s opinion, starting from Virgilius Maro Grammaticus’ writings, charaxāre ‘to write’ was unique to Hisperic usage and derived from the knowledge of Greek glosses circulating among Irish monks from the VI-VII century AD onwards.