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prettygoodwordtraduce (truh-DOOS) - v.t., to speak maliciously and falsely about, slander, defame; to violate, betray.
There are also earlier, now obsolete senses, to pass on and to transmit, which are closer to the original Latin sense of traducere, from trans-, across + ducere, to lead -- but the defamatory sense developed in Latin before we borrowed the word, at least in a meaning of "to scorn or disgrace," the metaphoric extension apparently being to lead along as a spectacle, as in a Roman triumph. The pass on sense was borrowed around 1530, the defamatory in the 1580s.
---L.
There are also earlier, now obsolete senses, to pass on and to transmit, which are closer to the original Latin sense of traducere, from trans-, across + ducere, to lead -- but the defamatory sense developed in Latin before we borrowed the word, at least in a meaning of "to scorn or disgrace," the metaphoric extension apparently being to lead along as a spectacle, as in a Roman triumph. The pass on sense was borrowed around 1530, the defamatory in the 1580s.
---L.
