prefix
sē-1
sē-
Meaning
- morphemeapart-; aside-; away-
claudō (“to close, shut, confine”) → sēclūdō (“to shut off”)
dūcō (“to lead”) → sēdūcō (“to lead away or astray, separate from”)
- morphemewithout; lacking; wanting; -less
cūra (“care, worry”) → sēcūrus (“free from care, easy; careless”)
cor (“heart as the seat of vitality”) → socors (“lacking in vitality or alertness, sluggish, inactive, dull”)
Charlton Lewis's shorter dictionary for students: the same scholarship in plain, modern definitions.
sē- in composition for sēmi, as in selibra.
sē- in composition for sex, as in semestris.
Origins
From *s(w)ēd, the ablative singular of Proto-Indo-European *s(w)é (“self”) lengthened under phrasal stress. Note there's no hard evidence for a /w/ in Italic, which is likely taken from the possessive pronoun in other branches. The original meaning was "per se, by itself", whence "however, but" as conjunction and "without, away" as preposition, parallel to English only (“but”). Doublet of sē as well as sed, where the vowel shortened proclitically (or never lengthened). Compare the semantically close vē-, which might also be a doublet with loss of /s/.