Let me explain the somewhat cryptic thread title: I want to verify my semantic understanding of the verb oriri by comparing it to other Latin "verbs of rising" which have overlapping semantic fields. The lost verb *cellere (lost by the time of the earliest Latin writings that we have, and so unattested, but living on by it's forming the stem of excellere "to rise past", "to surpass", "to excel") meant "to rise" in the literal sense of "to rise (to move away from the Earth's surface) through the air". The verb ascendere, most literally meaning "to climb up", "to mount (up)", "to scale", or "to ascend", but also figuratively "to move upwards through a heirarchy" and "to increase in some metric such as power, influence, or prestige", has taken up the meaning of *cellere following its loss (which loss for strange and unknown reasons...*kel- is surmised to have been the basic verbal root for meanings associated with rising in PIE). The verb surgere basically means "to rise" in the sense of "to get up", "to spring upwards", "to surge up or out". I am of the thought that the verb oriri (orior) occupies a middle ground somewhere between ascendere/cellere on the one hand, and surgere on the other, basically meaning "to get up", and so being closer to surgere (minus the sense "to surge up/out"), but also sharing senses of "to rise" from both ascendere and *cellere. My question is whether I would be right in so thinking...
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