The following dialog is an excerpt from Terry Pratchet's Making Money:
“Isn’t the fornication wonderful?”
After quite a lengthy pause, Moist ventured, “Is it?”
“Don’t you think so? There’s more here than anywhere else in the city,
I’m told.”“Really?” said Moist, looking around nervously. “Er . . . do you have
to come down here at some special time?”“Well, during banking hours usually, but we let groups in by
appointment.”“You know,” said Moist, “I think this conversation has somehow got
away from me . . .”Bent waved vaguely at the ceiling.
“I refer to the wonderful vaulting,” he said. “The word derives from
fornix, meaning ‘arch’.”“Ah! Yes? Right!” said Moist. “You know, I wouldn’t be surprised if
not many people knew that.”
I do not dispute the origin of the word which is confirmed by this definition:
Sexual intercourse between partners who are not married to each other.
Word History: The word fornication had a lowly beginning suitable to what has long been the low moral status of the act to which it refers. The Latin word fornix, from which fornicti, the ancestor of fornication, is derived, meant "a vault, an arch." The term also referred to a vaulted cellar or similar place where prostitutes plied their trade. This sense of fornix in Late Latin yielded the verb fornicr, "to commit fornication," from which is derived fornicti, "whoredom, fornication." Our word is first recorded in Middle English about 1303.
My question is whether the word fornication ever actually meant vaulting in English as opposed to Latin. The definition above states that 'our' word first appeared in 1303 but did it carry both meanings or only the modern one? For that matter, does it carry both meanings today? None of the dictionaries I checked has that usage.
Best Answer
Yes, fornication once did mean arching or vaulting in English. The OED has it dating from 1703 in Richard Neve's The city and countrey purchaser, and builder's dictionary: or, The compleat builder's guide:
The etymology shows it coming directly from Latin. The entry isn't marked as archaic or obsolete, but it is marked as an 'Architecture' term, so not really in common use.
However, the meaning of 'sexual intercourse between a[n unmarried] man and an unmarried woman' is much older in English, dating to before 1300 in Cursor Mundi: a Northumbrian poem of the 14th century:
The OED also has a 1303 quotation from Robert Mannyng's Handlyng Synne:
This comes via Old French from late Latin.