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Are usquam, alicubi and uspiam synonyms or are there differences between these words, for example in how they are used?

Tyler Durden
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They are all synonyms, and there aren't many practical differences. For usquam and uspiam, Lewis and Short mention one difference:

usquam: at or in any place, anywhere (usu. in neg. clauses, while uspiam, corresp. to quispiam, is used also affirmatively).

It gives among examples this sentence:

iterum iste, cui nullus esset usquam consistendi locus, Romam se rettulit.

He returned to Rome a second time, since there was no place anywhere for him to remain.

For uspiam then, it's chiefly used in affirmative sentences:

sive est illa (lex) scripta uspiam, sive nusquam...

Whether this [law] is wrtten anywhere or nowhere...

This wasn't a hard and fast rule, and you can find the opposite (even listed in the Lewis and Short entry), so it's more about idiom than any actual denotative difference.

The ali- prefix on alicubi gives it a potenetial distributive property that the others can't do. You can see this in Seneca's De Tranquilitate Animi 2.2:

Opus est itaque non illis durioribus, quae iam transcucurrimus, ut alicubi obstes tibi, alicubi irascaris, alicubi instes gravis...

You therefore need not those harsher things which we have already traversed, that at some point you stand against yourself, at another point you are angry with yourself, and still another that you gravely urge yourself on...

cmw
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  • Hmm, ok, so there is only a slight difference. I asked because it seems kind of redundant to have a bunch of different words all meaning exactly the same thing. – Tyler Durden Sep 20 '21 at 18:07
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    @TylerDurden I mean, doesn't English have many, a lot, quite a few synonyms? But yeah, there are subtle distinctions in some contexts. – cmw Sep 20 '21 at 18:27
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All three words can mean "anywhere", so I guess in certain sense they can be called synonyms.

But of the three, only alicubi and uspiam can mean "somewhere", so they aren't really synonyns after all, are they?

Then in addition, alicubi can mean "elsewhere" or "occasionally", so then not even alicubi and uspiam are really synonyms.

Figulus
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