clxviii

quotiens

Definition: how many, how often, as often as

Sententia: None today, but there was a whole week of 'q' words last summer, starting at number 48, that you can look at.

"Quotiens" is not a particularly Vergilian word, occurring only 3 times total in books 3, 4, and 12. However, in Ovid it is found more frequently, 15 times in the Metamorphoses and 7 times in the Amores. Etymologically, it is formed from "quot," "how many," + "iens," a multiplicative suffix. If you are interested about various theories of why that is the case, Google Books has a doctoral thesis, "On the usage of quotiens and quotienscunque in different periods of Latin,"which gives more information about the etymology and other information about the word--one interesting theory is that perhaps "iens" came from the present active participle "iens" from "eo," though some linguists are skeptical of this possibility.