Co does mean ‘with’ or ‘together’ but in the sense of sharing a thing as in two people producing a book being “co-authors” or more than one person in SHARED ownership being “co-owners”.
Sitting beside a driver may mean we are co-passengers but I would NOT be a co-driver and attempts to be so might well end badly.
LL. Good point.
I would say that the "equal with" sense is a subset of the more general "with" sense. In any event, I was just showing how the word came up when somebody asked, oh heck I forget, something about the Latin or something that led me to refer to the Latin derivation.
The Latin meaning of "co-" would, for me, trump modern English usage, because it's a Latin word.
FWIW here's one thing I got when I googled
'"co" Latin prefix meaning etymology'
The 'Latin' source for English 'prefixes' is usually "cum," which means "with" as a preposition (thus magna cum laude), and can have several nuances as a prefix such as 'together,' 'combined,' or similar senses that indicate a connection or completion. Greek is not the same language as Latin. I am unaware of any 'co' root word, but Indo-European linguists may be able to help on that one....In any event, I'll take the position that it can mean all the things that "with" can mean, including "equal with". But to show that it means "equal with" in our use of the word "coredemptrix" is the job of the prosecution, because we'd fervently deny that she would be equal to Jesus in the redeeming work.co- is a shortened form of the prefix com-. There are other forms depending on the following sound, for example con- before 'g' as in congress or 's' as in constitute, col- before 'l' as in colleague, cor- before 'r' as in corrupt, and so on. These all derive from a Proto-Indo-European root *kom- meaning "beside, near, by" which also shows up in the German prefix ge-. here
MD, your comment: “co = prefix meaning ‘with’”, is more than a bit misleading due to it’s incompleteness.
Co does mean ‘with’ or ‘together’ but in the sense of sharing a thing as in two people producing a book being “co-authors” or more than one person in SHARED ownership being “co-owners”.
Sitting beside a driver may mean we are co-passengers but I would NOT be a co-driver and attempts to be so might well end badly.
GREAT POINTS.