avena

Forms

avena f (plural avenas)^[1] Salamanca and Extremadura have the reduced form vena.^[2]

Etymology

It is inherited from Latin avēna (“oats”), with the same form in Old Spanish.^[3][4][5][1] The same Latin word is Portuguese aveia, Galician avea, Catalan avena, French avoine and Italian avena.^[2][6] Galician also has the shorter vea, and in Santiago papas aveas is a porridge of oats.^[3][2]

De Vaan reconstructs Proto-Italic *aweksnā- and compares Lithuanian aviža, Latvian auzas and Proto-Slavic *ovьsъ, all meaning oats.^[7] He considers it probably a word of a non-Indo-European substratum, since the Baltic and Slavic suffixes do not match and the Latin suffix is not the one a native formation would show.^[7] He also rejects the old view that the ending was copied from arēna (“sand”).^[7] Wiktionary too calls it probably a substrate word.^[1]

Earliest recorded meaning

Berceo uses the word in the Vida de Santo Domingo de Silos (c. 1230) for the grain, in bread: a poor man would gladly eat pan d'avena “oat bread” if it were given to him.^[8][3] A Latin rent charter from Irache of 1223 already names a measure de auena beside one of wheat.^[9]

Semantic evolution

Old Spanish used it for the plant and for its grain;^[10] Berceo also speaks of giving oats to madmen, and the Libro de buen amor uses the plant figuratively.^[10] Covarrubias in 1611 describes it as a grain of little substance, fed green and dry to beasts and birds, and derives the Latin name from its failing to come to fruit, a guess of his time.^[11]

Latin avena also meant a hollow stalk and a shepherd's pipe made from one, as in Virgil's Eclogues.^[12] Golden Age poets took over this sense: Autoridades (1726) records avena as a poetic and purely Latin word for a flute, with lines of Villamediana and Góngora, and the DLE still lists it as poetic for the zampoña.^[13][5] Autoridades also notes an Asturian use for lumps of unrefined iron ore taken from the mine.^[13]

In the Americas the word is recorded from Chile in 1545;^[14] Mexican botanical lists of the 19th century name the plant Avena sativa.^[14] Wiktionary also gives the sense “oatmeal porridge”.^[1]

Timeline

• 1223 – de auena in a Latin charter of the abbot of Irache.^[9]
• c. 1230 – Berceo's Vida de Santo Domingo mentions oat bread.^[8][3]
• 1330 – the first occurrence in the Old Spanish texts of the HSMS archive.^[15]
• c. 1495 – Nebrija distinguishes avena vana and avena con grano, with their Latin names.^[16]
• 1518 – the derivative avenate, a drink made from oats.^[3]
• 1545 – first record in the Americas, from Chile.^[14]
• 1611 – Covarrubias describes oats as fodder for beasts and birds.^[11]
• 1726 – Autoridades records the poetic sense “flute”.^[13]

Meanings

Noun

1. Oats: an annual grass with slender stems and a loose, spreading panicle, grown for food and fodder.^[5][17][1]
2. The grain of this plant: Le dio un pienso de avena al caballo.^[5][1]
3. (poetic) A rustic pipe or flute, the zampoña.^[5][13]

Word family

• avenate

Related words

• Latin avēna
• Portuguese aveia

Usage notes

A wild oat is avena caballuna (Avena sterilis).^[17]

References

1. ^ a b c d e f g Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c García de Diego, Vicente (1985), Diccionario etimológico español e hispánico, 2nd ed., Madrid: Espasa-Calpe (1st ed. 1954), p. art. 819
3. ^ a b c d e Corominas, Joan; Pascual, José A. (1980–1991), Diccionario crítico etimológico castellano e hispánico, 6 vols., Madrid: Gredos, p. 1, 420
4. ^ Corominas, Joan (1973), Breve diccionario etimológico de la lengua castellana, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. avena
5. ^ a b c d e Real Academia Española; Asociación de Academias de la Lengua Española (2014–), Diccionario de la lengua española, 23rd ed., online version 23.8, https://dle.rae.es, p. s.v. avena
6. ^ Meyer-Lübke, Wilhelm (1935), Romanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., Heidelberg: Winter, p. 818
7. ^ a b c de Vaan, Michiel (2008), Etymological Dictionary of Latin and the other Italic Languages, Leiden Indo-European Etymological Dictionary Series 7, Leiden; Boston: Brill
8. ^ a b Alonso Pedraz, Martín (1986), Diccionario medieval español: desde las Glosas Emilianenses y Silenses (s. X) hasta el siglo XV, 2 vols., Salamanca: Universidad Pontificia de Salamanca, p. 454
9. ^ a b Real Academia Española (2013–), Corpus del Diccionario histórico de la lengua española (CDH), version 3.1, https://apps.rae.es/CNDHE, p. s.v. avena
10. ^ a b Boggs, R. S.; Kasten, Lloyd; Keniston, Hayward; Richardson, H. B. (1946), Tentative Dictionary of Medieval Spanish, 2 vols., Chapel Hill, N.C., p. 61
11. ^ a b Covarrubias Orozco, Sebastián de (1611), Tesoro de la lengua castellana o española, Madrid: Luis Sánchez (Biblioteca Wordkers transcription, CC BY 4.0), p. 244
12. ^ Glare, P. G. W., ed. (2012), Oxford Latin Dictionary, 2nd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
13. ^ a b c d Real Academia Española (1726–1739), Diccionario de la lengua castellana (Diccionario de Autoridades), 6 vols., Madrid: Francisco del Hierro, p. 1, 496
14. ^ a b c Boyd-Bowman, Peter (2003), Léxico hispanoamericano 1493–1993, ed. Ray Harris-Northall and John J. Nitti, New York: Hispanic Seminary of Medieval Studies, p. s.v. avena
15. ^ Hispanic Seminary of Medieval Studies (2026), Old Spanish Textual Archive (OSTA): semi-paleographic transcriptions of Old Spanish texts, ed. Francisco Gago Jover et al., https://www.hispanicseminary.org, p. s.v. avena
16. ^ Lleal, Coloma (dir.), DICCA-XV: Diccionario del castellano del siglo XV en la Corona de Aragón, Barcelona: Universitat de Barcelona, Grup d'Estudis d'Història de la Llengua (GHCL), https://ghcl.ub.edu/diccaxv, p. s.v. avena
17. ^ a b Moliner, María (2007), Diccionario de uso del español, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. avena